


Bigger Than Your Skin

by hammersandstrings



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Canon-Typical Violence, Execution, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Minor Character Death, Minor Mikasa Ackerman/Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager, Other, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 21:24:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 74,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3952264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hammersandstrings/pseuds/hammersandstrings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the year 835, a baby boy was born in a wealthy town on the border of the interior, where he lived until he gave up his heart for the good of humanity.<br/>In the year 1996, a baby boy was born in a wealthy town in the Inner District, from which he was promptly banned and sent to spend the rest of his life in the dark for the good of humanity.</p><p>If you asked, you would get the same answer: the boy of 835 did not exist. He was simply the main character of an allegory, a metaphor for the importance of controlling foolish impulses, of resisting your own selfishness.</p><p>Any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. under the weight of living

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELCOME TO HELL, aka the au that has implanted itself in my brain for nearly a year and refused to let go until i slapped it on ao3 and made it An Official Thing
> 
> inspiration comes in part from [this trip down memory lane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razia%27s_Shadow:_A_Musical), but mostly from hours sitting in starbucks drinking my weight in toffee nut lattes and probably making enough distressed facial expressions to weird the whole store out  
> similar to the album, the story will be split into two main arcs: canon divergence and reincarnation (we're looking at roughly 10 chapters per arc, but that's subject to change), so manga spoilers abound, beware, etc.
> 
> lastly, the tags will be updated each chapter with additional warnings. certain chapters will contain violence, blood, and death (bear in mind, though, that this is a reincarnation au and death isn't exactly permanent--hint hint wink wink nudge nudge). i will warn before the chapters in question, so keep yourself safe! <3
> 
> thank you, enjoy, and any comments are appreciated!

They say that history has a funny way of repeating itself. Even when no one will believe it—the illusion of recency. The idea that something is brand new, when in fact, it has happened before.

Cicero warned of the deterioration of youth culture two millenniums before Baby Boomers claimed that selfies and the internet were ruining the world. Napoleon’s Russian invasion plans were thwarted by the unforgiving winter in 1812, and 129 years later, so were Hitler’s.

In the year 1850, the kingdom of Sina locked itself behind giant walls of stone and brick to preserve the humanity of its warring factions, and if you were aware that in the year 745, three walls divided humanity from giant beasts that were once human themselves… well, there was an anonymous grave in an abandoned cemetery and a missing persons report with your name all over it.

In 835, a baby boy was born in a wealthy town on the border of the interior, where he lived until he gave up his heart for the good of humanity. In 1996, a baby boy was born in the wealthy town of Sina’s Inner District, from which he was promptly banned and sent to spend the rest of his life in the dark for the good of humanity.

If you asked, you would get the same answer: the boy of 835 did not exist. He was simply the main character of an allegory, a metaphor for the importance of controlling foolish impulses, of resisting your own selfishness. Any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental. We swear.

Don’t question it.

Don’t ask.

Just listen.

 

* * *

 

** 847 **

The rain had cleared up for the first time in days.

Trost was still soaked with it, cobbled roads shining wetly with the leftover runoff that had carried away the dust and dirt brought in by the gusty late-summer wind. The sky was still an ugly brown-tinged grey that made the whole place look like the apocalypse was nigh, but at least the torrential downpour that had plagued the city for the last week was gone for long enough that Jean could sit out on the front porch again without worrying about coming back inside soaked to the bone. That was enough for him.

His hands were stained in shades of black and grey with charcoal. It ran up to his elbows, beneath the sleeves of his shirt, smeared along the pages of the parchment pad balanced precariously on his lap as he sketched with reckless abandon—however reckless a kid drawing in silence on a cold Sunday morning could be. He sketched the tops of buildings along hazy skyline in the distance, the stifling smokescreen of clouds above. The lines of the merchants’ carts lining up in the town square to peddle bread and freshly caught fish, blurs of children waking up to run about the slicked streets, the group of Wallists on the corner, particularly loud and obnoxious after the week of inclement weather, proclaiming the sanctity and piousness of Wall Rose.

His mother called it a coping mechanism. He called it, directly quoted, “self-expression or whatever.” Both of them were probably right, in a way.

Jean Kirschstein hadn’t had a _tragic_ life, by any means—he’d barely been ten years old at the time it happened, but he knew enough about the Shiganshina disaster and the subsequent fall of Wall Maria two years prior to know that his safe-but-uneventful childhood in Trost had no business staking any claim on the word, but there were times when he needed _something_. Something to occupy his time, get his mind off of dumb shit that didn’t matter, whatever it was, because it wasn’t like he’d ever had much else to do but people watch and hang out with his mom anyway.

And so drawing was a skill developed partially out of boredom, partially out of a need to let his inner self out, and mostly out of the fact that in twelve years of life, his policy of brutal honesty hadn’t garnered him a single friend with whom he didn’t share a last name. Funny, that.

The charcoal stick dropped to his lap with a quiet _thunk_ after he finished outlining the last touches of a rooftop at the end of the street. He could hear his mother bustling about in the kitchen, the smell of cooking breakfast wafting through the gaps in the shutter slats behind his head, and if he was going to eat in this century, he figured he should probably go inside to wash the mess off of his hands.

His mother looked harried when he pushed the front door open with his hip, greying brown hair spilling from a hastily tied ponytail at the base of her neck and some form of dough splattered on the apron over her dress, but she managed a smile anyway.

“Jean-bo,” she said. “I didn’t have to wake you this morning.”

Jean shrugged his way into the kitchen, past the counter where his mother was arranging the food onto thick plates, and over to the water pump beneath the window. With both hands submerged beneath the stream of cool water, he rubbed them together hastily as the runoff turned grey with charcoal beneath his palms.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he murmured vaguely. With hands as clean as they were going to get, he dried them on a stray towel and settled into a wooden stool on the other side of the counter. “Breakfast?”

“Cinnamon buns and eggs with cheese. You’d better be hungry.”

Jean raised his eyebrows, if only to appease her. “Cheese, huh?”

Ms. Kirschstein smiled. It emphasized the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, but she was still beautiful. Still his best friend, only friend. His one good thing in the world.

“The Wagners’ shop had some this morning, if you’d believe it. The goats in Dauper must be having a good season. I thought that if today was the day my Jean-bo leaves to train for the Military Police, he should eat like the Military Police.”

A plate was placed in front of Jean, cinnamon-swirled buns shining with butter and sugary glaze next to a heaping mound of scrambled eggs flecked with crumbles of white cheese and small, brown slivers of mushroom. His mother slid a teacup next to it, then slowly poured boiling water over the leaves so that the steam billowed and rose in the air between them.

“Mom,” Jean said again, and he raked his fork across the top of a bun so four tiny glaze trenches were left in its wake. The familiar scent wafted into his nostrils, a piece of his childhood calling out to him on this, the very day he was to leave it behind. He closed his eyes against the gentle breeze through the window, waiting for her reply.

“I’ll have none of your backtalk, kid. Eat. The carts should be in the square by noon, and you’ve got a long day of travel ahead of you.”

And so he ate quietly, one of the two buns and half of the eggs, two cups of tea with honey and fresh lemon from the market, until his stomach felt full and the clock tower in the distance chimed its eleventh bell.

Outside, children were still playing in the streets. One of them, small and bespectacled with rounded red cheeks, tossed a battered rag doll to their friend, who caught it with a lunge and a proud laugh that filtered through the kitchen window.

Jean watched them with his chin rested on a curled fist. It wasn’t long ago that he was that young, before Wall Maria, before anyone remembered what it meant to live in fear of the titans. He’d never been one for friends—that is, other kids were never much for befriending _Jean_ , who had been a grumpy kid with a bad attitude, mocked for being chubby until he turned ten, shot up like a weed, and acquired the metabolism of a hummingbird—but he could still picture the days when he would visit his cousins in Stohess with their shiny red bouncy balls. They used to run through the streets playing catch and four square and keep away, until the sun sunk below the walls on the horizon.

By the time he tore his eyes away from the window, Jean had scratched a long, thin line down the middle of the blackened steel of his plate with his knife, and his mother’s hand was resting between the sharp points of his shoulder blades, where the knobs of his spine were barely hidden beneath the tiniest layer of muscle that he’d managed to put on in preparation for the Trainee Corps.

“You know,” his mother said, and she rubbed the stiff muscles of his shoulders in small circles, “if you’re afraid, you don’t have to go.”

Jean could feel himself shrink under her gaze. His shoulders sunk, and his spine bent with the weight of it as he slumped forward, over his cold plate.

The offer was tempting: a life of peace, of tranquility, of staying at home without the risk of death by training, or _worse_ , by the titans. He could apprentice under a shop owner or a blacksmith, maybe, or a fisherman by the river, settle down, get a house, start a family—

He shook his head and sat up straight, rigid. “I’m not scared.”

It took his teeth painfully clamped around the inside of his cheek to keep the honest _‘not_ that _scared, at least,’_ at bay. His fingers gripped the fork tighter and tighter, but his mother’s hand did not stop its soothing trail between his shoulder blades.

“I know,” she said, lying. “It’s okay to be, though.”

Jean bristled under her hand. It paused where it lay on his back and he glared steadfastly ahead, at the wall, at the doorway farther off, where the notches in the wood that marked his growth as a child were—low to the ground up until the more recent marks. Anything to keep himself from looking into his mom’s honest face and feel his own crumping.

“I’m not,” he said firmly, and then, “I’m going to make the top ten, remember? And when I join the Military Police, I’m gonna get you a house in the Interior, and we’ll never have to see the titans’ ugly faces, right?”

He finally chanced a look in his mother’s direction, and the tears gathered in her eyes threatened to spill down her rounded cheeks.

“Of course, my baby,” she said.

Jean buried his face in her shoulder, fistfuls of her sleeves clenched between his fingers, before he felt the warm drip of a teardrop fall onto his neck.

 

* * *

 

The town square was crowded by noon, the sun high in the sky, hot and unyielding. Jean had to lift a hand to shield his face from the blinding light as the horse drawn carts, three of them total, came rolling down the cobbled road, directed by people in tan jackets and forest green cloaks emblazoned with the two swords crossed over a silver shield. They were older, for the most part: retired captains and commanders, soldiers injured in action, Garrison transfers tired of the overage of downtime spent drunkenly pissing over the wall or whatever the hell it was that the Garrison did. People who lived much longer than the world expected them to.

The crowd parted, and the carts stopped in the middle of the square. Meager applause sounded from scattered areas, but mostly, people began craning their necks to stare, right at the gathered circle of new recruits at the center.

“They get ‘em younger and younger every year,” said one person.

“Better them than us,” remarked another.

“How many of them bastards d’ya think are gonna die in training?” a third voice asked. “Better’n gettin’ drunk in the Garrison or fat in the MP, I reckon. Or the goddamned _Survey Corps_ , worst of all, wasting our hard-earned tax dollars.”

Jean’s spine tingled with a sharp chill. He gritted his teeth, hiked the strap of his rucksack further up his shoulder, and tried instead to listen to the voice of the woman approaching the crowd. Her auburn hair was windswept, falling into sunken eyes, and she leaned heavily on a rickety crutch that her cape billowed around in the breeze. Beneath the material of her stark white pants, Jean could make out the lines of a crudely attached wooden leg.

“Recruits, your cart assignments are as follows!” she shouted, voice booming. “Cart number one: Elias Cooper, Cara Townsend, Tamara Zimmerman, Hannah Diamant, Thomas Wagner, Jean Kirschstein…”

The list continued, fifteen of them in total for the first cart, but Jean didn’t register anything after his own name. He stepped to the front of the group with the rest of his cart mates. A few of them struck him as familiar—Elias and Tamara hadn’t been particularly kind to him as a child, but Hannah had always been friendly, and Thomas seemed decent enough when they ran into each other at his parents’ grocery from time to time. Jean sat between them in the middle of the cart, close enough to the back not to smell the horses and far enough from the sides that they would have some semblance of a barrier from the wind. Hannah and Thomas chatted amiably with each other for the remainder of the assignments, but Jean kept quiet, his gaze trained on the crowd that was slowly beginning to thin out.

He sat there and he watched, until the horses started to move and the carts began to pull away and the last person left standing in the square was his mother, standing tall and proud, saluting him with a fist in front of her heart and tears in her eyes.

 

* * *

 

As far as the training camp went, it was a complete other world compared to Trost. Old wooden buildings, weathered and faded from wind and rain and snow and sunshine eating away at their surfaces, sat in a line at the bottom of a shallow canyon. Along the canyon walls were rickety old contraptions fitted with cables and wires and coils for 3D Maneuver Gear training. The rest of the area was barren, flat ground sectioned off with low fences and trenches in the dirt. Far in the distance, beyond the buildings of the camp and the arid land of the canyon floor, a shining lakebed; on the other side, a forest sprouted up, seemingly out of nowhere.

Unglamorous, nothing like the paved cobblestone roads and pristine buildings of the city, but Jean still stared at it in awe as it loomed closer and closer.

The carts coming in from Trost were among the first few to arrive to the camp, only beat out by those from the refugee camps that housed what little of Wall Maria’s population had managed to survive since the appearance of the Colossal and Armored Titans. The rest of the carts were to arrive periodically throughout the night, with the final ones, from the further districts and the inner wall, coming early in the morning. The place was as close to barren as it is going to be for the next three years. Jean took the opportunity to seek out prime real estate in the boys’ barracks, the bottom bunk furthest from the noise of the doors, big enough for two people—but for tonight, only him.

Too tired to make a trip to the dining hall, he dug in his rucksack for the extra bread rolls he’d packed for the trip, along with his sketchbook, and fluffed up the meager pillow provided to settle in for the night. In the dim light of the lantern hung on the wall over his bunk, he sketched aimlessly: the wood grain of the walls, the angles of his thin legs crossed in front of him, the two boys—one with dark, messy hair and wild eyes, the other with thick bangs and golden locks cut at jaw length—talking closely on their bunk across the room. He sketched until his eyes got heavy, the muscles in his wrist weary from overuse, and his sketchbook began to run low on unmarked paper. He flipped through the rest to count: one, two, three, four, _five_ empty pages, and when he flipped to the sixth, he found that it wasn’t quite empty at all.

 _Jean-bo_ , read the swirling cursive, smeared from the pages above rubbing over it. _Good luck training. I have all the faith in the world that you can make the top ten, so don’t you dare give up, okay? But know that whatever happens, I will always love you, no matter what. Love, Mom._

Jean traced the words with his forefinger, even the playful addendum added to the bottom, _(P.S. Feel free to visit with any friends you make whenever you want)_ , until his fingerprint came back just as black and grey as it had in the morning. Then, he closed his sketchbook, tucked it safely under his pillow, blew out the lantern, and fell asleep to the gentle hum of chatter from the two boys across the room.

 

* * *

 

As soon as the barracks door was thrust open the next morning, Jean was awake. He had been for at least an hour, staring at the ceiling with his hands folded together over his stomach, fingers tapping incessant patterns against his ribcage in time with the swift panging of his heart.

He’d told his mother he wasn’t scared—not that much, at least—and it wasn’t that big of a lie when he’d said it, but lying in bed in a cabin full of people he didn’t know, most of whom would probably be dead a second after graduation, if not before then, the truth caught up with him. Maybe it wasn’t quite fear, but it was something. Anxiety, maybe, or frustration.

He’d seen them before: The Survey Corps, the bastards who were daring to the point of idiocy, who had been slaughtered in nearly immeasurable numbers since their inception a century ago. They came through the streets of Trost every so often, leaving for expeditions, investigating the outside world. He used to toddle downstairs on chubby legs to watch them pass the front door with wonder—they were like the heroes his mother read him stories about when he couldn’t sleep on long nights, courageous and strong and unafraid to risk their lives to make life better for the rest of humanity trapped behind the walls.

He was ten years old when he noticed that they never seemed to come back with the same amount of troops they left with. The Colossal Titan reared its ugly head over Wall Maria not two hours later.

He stopped believing in the Survey Corps then—what good was researching the titans if they were just going to come back bigger and stronger every time? What was the point in aiming to die pointlessly instead of living in the Interior, strong and happy and safe?

Right?

When the last carts arrived from Stohess and Jinae, instructors with arms full of uniform jackets, pants, boots, and 3DMG belts entered the barracks. They gave simple instructions: find your size (“yes, Hoover, we have extra-long pants”), wear whatever shirt you want (“no, Springer, you can’t ask one of the girls for a bra”), style your hair the way you like it as long as it’s not going to get tangled in your gear and rip your head off (Jean thanked his freshly shaven undercut and wondered about the blond boy with the jaw-length hair), and report immediately to the field outside before breakfast for initiation.

A boy fresh off the carts, shorter than even the average girl, with dark skin and his hair buzzed so close to his head that his whole scalp was on display, grabbed Jean by the arm before he could slink to the back of the crowd again. With a wide smile, he introduced himself as Connie Springer, pronounced the two of them new friends, and dragged Jean to the second row of trainees instead. Jean followed in a daze, unused to the companionship.

A tall boy with sleek black hair and a smattering of freckles across his cheeks stepped in next to them, and he remained silent with rigid, obedient posture until directly addressed by the commander. Jean scoffed at him, goodie two-shoes kind of kid. He babbled some kind of idealistic bullshit about serving the king when asked why he wanted to join the Military Police, and it took all of Jean’s willpower not to roll his eyes.

It could have been worse, though. The kid could be aiming for the Survey Corps. At least he had _some_ of his priorities straight.

Initiation was rough after that—courtesy of Commander Shadis, Jean ended up with a face full of dirt and a bruised forehead that didn’t nearly match the size of the one on his ego, both of which were nothing compared to the four finger-shaped marks on either of Connie’s ears or the aching legs that would inevitably catch up with the girl who got caught eating a potato and was sentenced to a day of running the canyon floor without stopping.

Jean learned that blond boy was Armin, from the area of Wall Maria that the titans attacked two years prior, and that his messy-haired friend was skipped over for reasons unknown to anyone standing on the field. The theory milling about was that he had seen the titans firsthand, that he knew what he was there for, didn’t need any extra intimidation. Something like that. Jean didn’t think too hard on it because he had no intent to see a titan ever.

“My fucking _head_ ,” Jean grumbled mostly to himself on the way to breakfast. Everything on him—his pants, his jacket, the olive green shirt he’d spent about a thousand years soaking and stretching the wrinkles out of—was coated in a layer of light brown dust, and he tried in vain to brush it all off with his hands during the walk.

“Fuck your head,” said Connie. “I have big goddamn ears, okay, but that doesn’t make getting picked up by them hurt any fuckin’ less. ‘Ey, Reiner!”

Another blond, this one broader than Armin, with much shorter hair, turned around at Connie’s call. Another person skipped over during initiation, Jean noted, Reiner stood taller than almost everyone on the walk to breakfast except for the nervous-looking kid on his right side who was tall and lanky enough to pass for a titan himself. Their size dwarfed the pale blonde on his left who glared Connie down with a gaze so steely that Jean found he couldn’t look at her too long without discomfort creeping up on him.

“Springer!” Reiner called. “How’re your ears?”

“They hurt like hell, man. They bruising yet? I feel like they’re bruising.”

Reiner stepped close, and he used the significant height difference between himself and Connie to examine the damage. “Little bit, yeah. Ice ‘em before training,” he said, and then, “Hey, Con, who’s your friend?”

Jean stared at him blankly. People acknowledging him off the bat was something he had to get used to—even Thomas had found friends from other towns since their arrival, and Hannah was currently ogling the textbook definition of tall, dark, and handsome. Being around the bouncing ball of energy that was Connie was already enough to take in, but there was something else—something about Reiner that struck him as odd. Some kind of discomfort lurking behind his perma-grin, something that seemed almost… maybe _dark_ wasn’t the right word, but it was the closest thing Jean could think of. Whatever it was, Reiner’s smile came a little more cautious than the rest of the trainees’ when he aimed it in his direction.

Jean looked away with a puff of breath between his parted lips. He wasn’t used to the amount of communication, that was all. He was seeing things. That must have been it.

“This is Jean, from _Trost_ ,” Connie said, adopting a haughty tone on _Trost_ , as if it was the damned capitol city itself. “Jean, this is Reiner. Big Foot back there is Bertholdt, and Silent But Deadly is Annie. I met ‘em on the cart here, isn’t that badass?”

“Badass,” Jean echoed distractedly.

Connie and Reiner talked amiably through breakfast, with the occasional chime in from Bertholdt. Annie stayed quiet, as did Jean as he shoveled small bites of flavorless, lukewarm oatmeal in his mouth and thought about how much he missed his last breakfast in Trost.

 

* * *

 

The good thing about the first day of training was that Jean turned out to be surprisingly adept at 3D Maneuver Gear.

The test cables, at least, with their squeaky pulleys and aging wood frames, weren’t too much of an issue, though that was mostly down to a mixture dumb luck and genetics. Since his growth spurt, Jean’s arms were long and his legs were spindly like a spider’s. His center of gravity may have been a lot higher than the other trainees’, but one stretch of the wrist outward and he was steady again, even after a decent wobble nearly upended him into the dirt. The longer he spent suspended in the air, the more comfortable he felt with it, and the more comfortable he felt, the more confident he was that this whole training thing would be a walk in the park, that the Military Police was just a step away.

The bad thing about the first day of training was… nearly everything else.

Connie was nice and all. He put up with Jean’s sulky attitude and managed to match it with wit and humor, didn’t get personally offended when Jean’s replies erred on the side of not exactly polite, but he was also mile-a-minute—a constant, unending stream of enthusiasm that was difficult to get used to being around when Jean was already too used to either the presence of his serene mother or no one at all.

Reiner wasn’t bad, either, or Bertholdt. Annie was another story, or she would have been if she spoke in anything other than blank stares and wordless huffs. And yet Jean found an odd sort of comfort in her brooding silence, like he wasn’t the only person who was withdrawn in a camp full of so much noise.

It was the sheer amount of _people_ around that got Jean so uncomfortable.

In Trost, he was invisible. Another face in a crowd of busy, bustling people with better things to do. Training camp, in comparison, was like being put under constant watch. Everywhere he turned, it was like he was being followed by spyglass, especially after emerging from 3DMG training as an early frontrunner.

The instructors’ eyes felt like they were following him like a cast of hawks as he _thunked_ down his tray in the mess hall at dinner on the second night of training, even though they weren’t, the lot of them too busy going over the next day’s regimen to pay much attention to him.

He shoveled a bite of carrot from his vegetable soup into his mouth, though, and caught the auburn-haired instructor from the morning before looking meaningfully at him as she nudged a superior officer in the arm. When he stared back at her, eyebrows set in a hard look halfway to a glare, she averted her eyes like she hadn’t done a thing.

“ _Incredible_ ,” Jean murmured under his breath, tearing off a chunk of stale bread and chewing it with more vigor than necessary.

Reiner snorted into his mug of tea. “Don’t bathe in the attention too much there, Kirschstein.”

“They’re getting an early read on us,” Bertholdt amended, a stern glance in Reiner’s direction. “Only ten from this squad make it into the Military Police, you know? First impressions are probably good signifiers of what’s to come.”

“Yeah, _okay_ ,” Jean grunted. “Speaking of first impressions, where’d Baldy McLoudMouth go?”

Annie’s piercing eyes turned on him.

“I mean Connie.”

She rolled them away.

“Sucked down his food before you even sat down and scampered over there.” Reiner pointed a couple of tables down, where a sizable group crowded around someone seated at a bench. “Guess there’s a kid from Shiganshina talking about the wall falling.”

“Oh?” Jean leaned forward to see who was in the center of the crowd, but there were too many of them in the way, fidgeting and blocking his view. He could only make out a few of them fully: a girl with black pigtails, a guy who looked far too old to be a trainee, and the kid who stood with him and Connie at initiation, who then stood more than a head taller than the majority of the rest of them with a significantly less eager expression on his pensive face. “Why aren’t you guys over there then?”

Reiner snorted, puffing out his broad chest. “We’re—”

“We saw them,” Bertholdt cut him off. A firm hand on Reiner’s shoulder seemed to push him back to reality, and his facial expression sobered. “Um, not the Armored and Colossal specifically, but the, um… the others. The regular t-titans. They came through our village before we got evacuated.”

Annie rolled her eyes again. She had a habit of that, it seemed; Jean wasn’t even sure if he’d heard her voice at all yet.

“Shit,” Jean said, unsure exactly how to react. He tried to put himself in their position—what would he have done if the titans had shown up in Trost? Run, probably. Get his mother to safety. Still be sitting here at this table in this camp two years later wanting to get into the Military Police and the fuck away from them forever.

Bertholdt smiled gratefully, if not a little strained. His fingers tensed on Reiner’s shoulder, gripping tighter until Reiner caught some sort of unspoken signal and Jean had to look away to avoid getting caught up in the awkward moment.

He watched the crowd again, finally catching Connie crouched in front of the pigtailed girl, his arms folded atop the table and his chin resting on his hands, eyes alert. In front of him, Armin’s friend held a piece of bread in his hand, examining it with a cocky smile quirked on his lips.

“—titans aren’t that big a deal. Once we master the 3D Maneuver Gear, they’ll be no match for us.”

Jean didn’t even make an attempt to mask the unimpressed expression that crossed his face.

“We finally have the chance to be soldiers, I mean. I-I just swallowed wrong earlier,” the kid said, a look of determination painted across his face. “I’ll join the Survey Corps and purge the world of titans. I’ll exterminate them—”

Jean couldn’t actually sit there and just listen to him babble. He had to say something, the need was writhing beneath his skin. _God_ , what was this kid trying to get all of these gullible people into? Certain death?

“Dude, are you nuts?” Jean asked, finally raising his voice over the cacophony of chatter.

The crowd around the boy parted, and looking at the miffed expression on his face, the wild green eyes, the bandage wrapped around his forehead, Jean remembered him eating shit during 3DMG practice that afternoon.

Eren Jaeger, that was his name.

“Did you _seriously_ just say you want to join the Survey Corps?”

Bertholdt looked down in embarrassment. Reiner raised his eyebrows. Annie, predictably, was unaffected. Next to Eren, Connie’s eyes were opened wide enough that his pupils nearly disappeared into the golden brown of his irises.

“Damn straight,” Eren said. His eyes narrowed into a harsh scowl, too many crinkles around them for a kid who couldn’t be any older than Jean himself. “Let me guess, you’re planning on joining the Military Police to take it easy, right?”

“At least I’m being honest. It’s better than acting tough when you’re actually scared shitless.”

_If you’re afraid, you don’t have to go._

_I’m not scared._

Before Jean could register what was going on, Eren had shoved the bench back from the table and was standing over him, fists clenched at his side.

“You got something to say?” he gritted between clenched, crooked teeth.

Somewhere to his side, freckled kiss-ass shouted, “Hey, stop it!” in a high-strung, panicked voice, angling his head over his shoulder at the instructors’ table and then back at them again. The instructors were watching, still pretending that they weren’t.

“Come on,” Jean sighed, dragging himself up to meet him at eye level—as best he could, that was; he had a good few inches on Eren that had the other boy craning his neck to look at him properly. “I wasn’t actually—”

Outside, the bell tower clanged, signifying the end of dinner and time to head back to the barracks for the night. A higher-up captain in the corner confirmed it with a barked order to clean up and a meaningful stare aimed right between Jean and Eren.

Jean sighed to himself, glad for the interruption. Eren, though, was still looking at him with too-intense eyes, lips set in a slight frown.

“My bad,” Jean said with a roll of his shoulders. “I wasn’t trying to judge you.” _Trying_ being the key word. “Let’s just let it go, yeah?”

He extended a hand that Eren eyed dubiously before low-fiving. He’d meant a handshake, but… he’d take what he could get.

“Yeah, same here,” Eren replied, resigned. “I overreacted.”

Jean watched him leave, brows furrowed, wondering what the _hell_ got into that kid, and maybe a little into himself. He couldn’t fathom a single reason to join the Survey Corps, though, not when there were other, less certain-death options. Given the choice, Jean would probably go back home and risk being an embarrassment to the entire Kirschstein ancestry than get saddled with death by giant cannibalistic beast as his fate.

He turned on a heel to trash what was left of his now lukewarm soup, but he had barely moved further than that when someone shoved past him, a sharp shoulder against his upper arm that he had half a mind to yell at the owner of until he actually got a good look at her.

Her name was Mikasa Ackerman, apparently, and she was unreal.

People didn’t _exist_ who looked like her. The face of a storybook princess, the stoic eyes of a seasoned warrior, hair like black silk imported from the finest shops in the interior. She was quiet, from what he’d seen of her—not the Jean variety quiet, which usually came with a healthy peppering of doubt and irritation, but a different kind, like she was taking in her surroundings, waiting and calculating, like a sniper.

Naturally, Jean couldn’t even look at her without stumbling over his words and driving her away.

“‘You have pretty black hair,’ really? Wow, Jean, please teach me the tricks to your art of seduction because it is _fantastic_.”

 _Her_ name was Sasha, but Potato Girl was more fun if you wanted to piss her off, which was more fun than befriending her anyway, because she took that kind of shit serious.

“Can it,” Jean muttered under his breath as he watched Mikasa disappear into the night, following behind Eren with long strides that make her skirt flutter around her calves. He averted his eyes after a moment to glare at Sasha, leaning against the wall outside of the mess hall so her long, auburn ponytail draped down the wooden siding. “Shouldn’t you be running, Potato Girl?”

“Hey, screw you, that was yesterday,” Sasha grumbled. In the pocket of her jacket, Jean could see the torn crust of a piece of bread from dinner that she probably shouldn’t have had, but he didn’t mention it, too wrapped up in watching Mikasa and Eren argue in the distance. He couldn’t blame her, anyway—the rest of the food in the dining hall was abysmal, and he decided about halfway through dinner that he would rather have his last leftover roll in the barracks than spend his first night at camp shoveling flavorless broth into his mouth and calling it soup.

“What’s that kid’s _deal_?” Jean asked. He watched Eren flick Mikasa’s hair out of her face with a scowl, saw her grab a piece of it between her fingers and examine it closely. Sasha shrugged, watching with composed interest. “Like, if he wants to join the Survey Corps, that’s on him, but not all of us are so eager to die to accomplish nothing. Why get yourself killed when you can serve in peace and quiet with the MP?”

“He’s from Shiganshina. He was there that day, same with his friends.”

Jean recognized the third voice from not five minutes before. He turned his head to see the freckled boy from initiation. Marco, he remembered after a moment, from Jinae, one of the rural farming districts in the southern region of the wall.

Jean glared at him. “I don’t see what that has to do with wanting to die in the Survey Corps. Shouldn’t he want to live in safety after seeing all that shit? It’s fucking baffling to me.”

Marco and Sasha looked at each other, both shrugging, before Sasha was waved over by two girls—one small and blonde, the other towering over her—and made a quick excuse to head back to the girls’ barracks.

“I’m not going to pretend to know or even understand his reasons,” said Marco. He kept a self-conscious sort of smile on his face as he spoke, like he was afraid he was going to be in trouble for it. It almost made Jean feel bad for him. Almost. “But then, I haven’t seen a titan with my own eyes.”

And maybe it was because Jean _wasn’t_ there, or because he hadn’t seen a titan either, or because the only person in the world he cared about was safe in Trost with nothing to worry about but if her son was making friends, but Jean just couldn’t grasp _how_ Eren could be so careless with his life to want to join the Survey Corps after being surrounded by death and destruction. Shouldn’t he want to protect himself, his friends, his family, if he even had any left? Wasn’t that the number one benefit of joining the Military Police, the safety of it all?

Whatever the reason, though, Jean shrugged it off. After the day he’d had, all he wanted to do was collapse in his bunk, eat, and fall asleep for about a hundred years.

“Whatever,” he said, stretching his shoulders. “You coming back to the barracks or what?”

“Oh, uh…” said Marco, and he honest to god _blushed_ beneath the smattering of freckles that dusted from one cheek to the other. He even had them on the shells of his reddened ears. “My bunkmate dropped out this morning. He took the first cart home right after lunch, and I thought I remembered Commander Shadis saying something about conserving bed space? I was actually on my way to talk to him about sleeping arrangements, so...”

Jean thought about his bunk, the mattress next to his that still remained unclaimed. He’d been hoping to keep it that way, to be perfectly honest, but better to share with a fellow aspiring Military Police officer than a Survey Corps hopeful like Eren, right?

He started on his way to the boys’ cabin and threw one last look over his shoulder. “We can bunk. You don’t snore, do you?”

Marco grinned, too bright and too straight for someone from a poor farming district. “I don’t,” he chuckled. “Do you?”

“Dunno,” Jean said. “Never heard myself sleep before.”

Marco was still laughing to himself, just a bit, when they made it back to the barracks. He followed Jean to the back corner, ducked into to what was now _their_ bunk behind him, and gingerly placed a small burlap bag of his belongings on the empty mattress closest to the aisle.

“Guess I can let you know then.” He idly scratched the bridge of his nose. “About the, uh, snoring thing. Jean Kirschstein, right?”

“Yep.”

“I’m Marco Bodt.”

“I know. We were standing next to each other out there yesterday.”

Jean found his last bread roll hidden between an unused sketchbook and a clean winter coat in his bag. He tossed it between his hands, then glanced at the edge of the sketchbook sticking out from beneath his pillow and huffed an abrupt stream of breath.

His mother wanted him to make friends—and he would need _someone_ to help him keep his composure if this place ended up being full of suicidal idealists like Eren—so he ripped the bread in half and extended one piece to Marco.

“It’s a couple days old, but it’s not, like, festering with mold or anything,” he said as an offering, then kicked himself internally for sounding like such a goddamned idiot. Marco smiled at him anyway. “I mean, it’s good.”

Marco reached for the piece of bread slowly, and when Jean handed it to him, he immediately took a small bite.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Marco practically moaned, his eyelids slipping serenely shut as he chewed the mouthful.

Jean’s eyebrows drew together as he took a bite of his own piece. His mouth was met with the same taste he was used to, nothing special or different about it. Crusty white baguette, maybe a hint of extra butter in the dough, but otherwise standard issue.

“Uh,” he said dubiously, “it’s just bread.”

“You don’t under _stand_ ,” Marco said with an embarrassed chuckle. He was speaking with his mouth full of food, and it seemed oddly out of character, but maybe the kid just _really_ liked bread. “I’m from _Jinae_. That’s, like, produce farming and nothing else. No wheat, no grain, not unless we get really lucky and another district is willing to give us their surplus, and even then, we have to ration it. There was some with dinner tonight, but good bread like this? That’s a _treasure_ where I’m from.”

Never in Jean’s life had he seen someone so happy to be eating two-day-old crusty bread flattened from being carried around in a rucksack full of clothes, but here was Marco Bodt, happily chewing away like a child eating a piece of candy. Jean paused before his teeth sunk into his half. He watched Marco take another grateful bite, then stared at his own piece while flaky crumbs fell into his lap. His stomach growled from ignoring his dinner, but Marco looked so damn happy that—

“Here.”

When Marco glanced up again, Jean tossed him the other half of the roll.

His eyes went wide. “Jean,” he said. “I can’t take all of your f—”

“Then it’s a loan, or something. I give you this bread, and if you ever get your hands on some good fruit, you gotta promise to get me some.” Jean’s voice was gruff and stern, but Marco’s eyes still gleamed bright and happy, so he cracked a reluctant, sarcastic smile. “Trost’s shit for fruit, anyway. If I have to eat another wild berry of uncertain origins, I might literally die.”

Jean expected a promise back, maybe another smile or blush. Jean did not expect Marco to hold one finger up at him—a signaled _wait a second_ —and rifle through his own bag. He _certainly_ did not expect Marco to retrieve a small, rounded thing with an indent running across the middle. The color of it was dark, red over a midnight purple so deep it looked almost black in the odd shadows cast by the lantern over the bed. When he reached out to accept it from Marco’s outstretched hands, it felt smooth to the touch and he could smell the sweet fruit beneath the skin.

“The fuck is this thing?” Jean asked with poorly concealed wonder.

Marco chuckled. “You’ve never seen a plum before?”

“We only had shitty pomegranates and berries, sometimes apples. Mostly stuff that got traded to us from surrounding districts,” Jean said idly. He ran his fingers across the skin until he memorized the feeling—smooth like an apple’s, but softer when he pushed down on it with the edge of his thumb—and then, with Marco’s cheerful encouragement, he took a huge bite.

In that instant, he felt the way Marco must have when he got a bite of that bread. The flavor of the plum was _unreal_ —sweet, light, a little bit sour—and the juice dripped down his chin, gathering with the leftover dirt from the day. He wiped it up with the back of his hand, conscious of the mess, but Marco didn’t seem to notice it. In fact, he was smiling even bigger than before.

“It’s good, right?”

Suddenly embarrassed by the overzealous show of affection over a piece of fruit, Jean cleared his throat and straightened his back, leaning against the wall.

“Yeah. It’s alright, I guess.”

He took another bite, smaller, savoring the flavor for a moment before taking another and another until the whole thing was just a shriveled yellow pit in his hand.

He almost missed the blush that stained Marco’s cheeks the same way the fruit juice stained his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading i hope you find $20 on the ground today


	2. place your hand on mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i'm not fast enough to make a habit of weekly updates (probably every 2 weeks), but i also want to get to the actual plot sooner than later so here's a thing!
> 
> in this chapter: vague descriptions of injuries, mentions of blood, foreshadowing x100

** 849 **

They didn’t talk a lot, not at first, which was an odd sort of thing. Most of the bunkmates in the barracks were either childhood friends—Reiner and Bert had known each other since they were infants, and Eren and Armin met when they were five and Eren’s father was stitching up a head wound Armin got from a couple of neighborhood bullies—or fast buddies that got paired together and rolled with it, like Connie and Nac, or, well… everyone else.

Jean and Marco, though, not so much.

It wasn’t like they didn’t speak at all; they did, in small doses. Marco made it a point to exchange good mornings when they woke up, goodnights when they went to sleep. They talked about trivial things: the day’s training exercises or whatever drama may have arisen during the week, but that was it. Jean didn’t know much about Marco, other than that he was from Jinae and he turned thirteen in June; Marco didn’t know much about Jean, either, other than that he was from Trost and he turned twelve in April. He mentioned one night with a bitter half-laugh that _god we’re just babies, aren’t we_ , and that was about as deep as their conversations went.

It was kind of as deep as Jean’s relationships with _anyone_ had gotten so far, if he was being honest. Connie, Reiner, Sasha, Bert, Annie—especially Annie. Surface-level friendships, idle small talk and occasional bickering, that was it. Even with his mother’s scrawled reminder at the back of his sketchbook, he couldn’t help but think that he didn’t come here to make friends. He came here to be the best, to beat everyone out and join the Military Police. If people made it there with him, he’d befriend them then. He reminded himself every time he brushed one of them off, said something too crass that made them cringe, that he had better things to do, trainees to outrank, a safer life to live.

After the first months, anyway, everything became routine: wake up, eat, hand-to-hand combat training, eat, 3DMG training, eat, bathe, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. Nobody to bother him, nobody for him to bother.

When the leaves of the forest trees sprouted up in deep greens and yellows, Jean finally felt like something was happening. His thin, weedy body had begun to fill out beneath the harnesses of his 3DMG, belt loops no longer strapped into the smallest hole and his uniform jacket no longer hanging limply off of frail arms and shoulders. He felt himself getting faster, stronger. He stopped following the group during training, cut his own course and slayed his own imaginary titans.

He was good. He was _so_ good.

But Eren Jaeger was always one step ahead of him.

Maybe it was the extra practice, or maybe he was just a fast learner, but always, without fail, when 3DMG training drills were over for the day and the instructors called out the number of titan replicas each trainee had slaughtered, Eren’s number was always just a pinch higher than Jean’s. And it killed him.

He turned thirteen during their first spring, when training in the forest wasn’t so murderous anymore (and he wished that the word wasn’t so appropriate, wished he hadn’t heard the screams of less coordinated comrades who lost control of their gear in the winter snow and careened into branches and trunks that couldn’t be seen in the white haze—but it was, and he’d made sure ever since that he was on his best guard at all times). The instructors brought out hulking wooden models of titans, ten and fifteen and sometimes twenty meters high, placed throughout the forest to find and attack.

Forest days were dangerous days, scary days, but they were his favorites. They kept him on his toes—or, maybe more accurately, his gear.

Most importantly, forest days were the days that he could show off his 3D Maneuver Gear skills, the one skill Eren Jaeger couldn’t beat him at.

Between the two of them, hand-to-hand combat days were Eren’s. Jean couldn’t find it in himself to give a shit about learning to punch people in the face to get weapons from them, but Eren was a fighter by nature, and Jean would readily admit that he kicked ass on those days.

But when the 104th Trainees Squad trudged across the forest floor and readied their gear beneath the shade of the trees, Jean knew he had him, had the entire squad minus Mikasa, Annie, Reiner, and Bertholdt, beat.

His birthday fell on a Saturday, and after very little fanfare (Connie sang him an off-key rendition a birthday song they used to sing in Ragako, Sasha promised not to antagonize him for a whopping 24 hours and then said it was the thought that counted when they started bickering at lunch, Marco sheepishly handed him a small red and yellow fruit he’d gotten in a package from home—a nectarine, whatever that was, but it had been delicious), the next Monday was spent swinging from trees in the forest like wild animals.

“Watch your back, Kirschstein!”

Connie wailed past him with a high-pitched shout that echoed between the trees. A stray branch snapped him in the leg and Jean flinched— _not again, don’t let it happen again, I don’t want to hear those sounds again_ —but Connie recovered with nothing but a loud laugh that Sasha echoed from overhead. Her body was balanced between two tree branches, on the lookout for the nearest titan cutout, and her feet dangled precariously beneath the straps holding her up by the hips.

“You’re gonna get us all killed, dumbass,” Jean barked at the shrieking pair of uniform-colored blurs. They weren’t _supposed_ to follow him, but apparently his secret shortcut wasn’t so secret anymore.

“Don’t be such a buzzkill! We’re gonna find that last titan before Reiner, Bert, and Annie this time and I’m gonna be king of the whole goddamned 104th, just you wait and see, man.”

“Uh, _co_ -king,” Sasha snapped at Connie. “I’m the one on lookout here, _I’m_ the brains of this operation.”

Connie sighed as he stopped on a thick branch to examine the damage to his leg—nothing life-ending, just a rip in the leg of his pants and a scrape with a tiny trickle of blood that probably wouldn’t even need dressing.

“Fine,” he said. “ _co_ -king.”

“Better.”

Jean bit back a comment about how _he_ was the one they’d been following and landed on a branch to catch his breath. He didn’t know how the two of them managed to stay so energetic for so long, because he was awesome at this and all, but even he was about ready to slay that fake titan and rub it in Jaeger’s face already so he could lay back down and rest his tired arms.

“Over there!”

Sasha hadn’t even finished her shout before she was darting through the trees on her gear, Connie following shortly after. It took a second, but once Jean shot the first hook of his 3DMG, he caught up to them easily.

The last titan dummy was in a clearing, barely visible through all the redwoods that surrounded it, but once Jean caught a glimpse, it was like he was locked on. He wouldn’t let the damn thing out of his sight until he cut away at the rubber mass on its thin, wooden neck and b—

 _Slice_.

Nobody saw who it was, just the flash of a brown jacket and white pants as the sharp sound of blades tearing through rubber sounded throughout the clearing. The missing chunk of fake neck fell to the forest floor pathetically, echoing in the silence of the forest when it clattered to the ground.

Sasha stopped her gear where she was, dangling by her waist between two trees again.

“ _What_ ,” she murmured under her breath.

“Holy shit, someone’s quick,” said Connie.

Jean kept going, though, driven by a mixture of curiosity about who it was and anger that they got there _before_ him, when—

 _Slam_.

All he could see was tree trunk, just for a second, and then everything went black.

 

* * *

 

“He’s fine.”

“I know. I know he is, I’m just making sure. If he wakes up, I don’t want him to be alone. Can you imagine how scary that’d be?”

“You’re gonna be late to dinner, Marco.”

“I’ll survive.”

Silence.

“But, uh, you wouldn’t mind sneaking us some rolls from the dining hall, would you?”

“Marco Bodt, you act as if sneaking food places isn’t our favorite pastime! I am _offended_.”

“Sorry.”

“No big, bud. I promise you he’s fine, though. Just a nasty bump to the head. Kinda makes his face a little more horsey, don’t ya think?”

“I’m just worried about him, okay? He’s my friend and—” Silence again, abrupt. “Thank you, Sasha. Thank you, Connie.”

“Don’t mention it. Seriously. If you hadn’t have caught him…”

“Hey. Don’t talk like that.”

“Ooh, touchy. See you later, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell him to get better soon, okay? ‘Cause I _need_ to kick his ass for scaring me like that.”

When Jean woke, finally, it felt like a box of bricks had been dropped on his face. He wasn’t sure if he’d dreamed the conversation or not, just that the room smelled terrible, the light from the lantern on the bedside table stung his eyes, and there was a dark-haired figure hovering over his bed.

“‘M I dead?” he managed to slur around his dry throat. Even talking hurt. He tried to angle his head to the side to look the figure in the face, but hissed in pain instead. “Are you Death?”

“Aw, dang, you figured out my secret,” said the figure. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“Blow out the fuckin’ light.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry. I wasn’t even thinking.”

With a puff of breath, the person blew out the flame of the lantern, and the room was instead filled with the orange glow of sunset. In the new lighting, Jean could make out the silhouette of Marco’s face, the dark freckles on his cheeks so close to his own.

“That better?”

“Fuck yeah. What the hell happened to me? I feel like I got sat on by a titan.”

Jean reached to touch his head and felt damp cloth instead of skin, and Marco immediately batted his hands away with gentle sweeps of his wrists.

“Hey, hey, don’t touch ‘em,” he said lightly. “You hit a tree during the training exercise today. Your ankle’s sprained and your head was bleeding pretty bad, so the nurse stitched it up for you.”

Pulling his hands back, Jean saw that yep, the dampness on his fingers was his own blood, mixed with water and sweat and some sort of salve. Lower down, his leg was mostly numb, probably from whatever sedative they had on hand, but the dull light was just enough for him to see crudely wrapped bandages around his right ankle. It made him cringe for a moment, but then the memories came flooding back.

The screams of trainees during the winter storms. Connie scraping his leg on a branch. Sasha hanging so precariously that she could have fallen to her death easily. The blur of a trainee slicing the last titan dummy, and then darkness.

He didn’t realize he had Marco’s hand in a death grip until he felt Marco squeezing back reassuringly.

“Jesus. What a fucking idiot,” Jean spat. “I can’t fucking believe myself.”

Marco shook his head. “Hey, it happens to the best of us.”

“Not to you,” Jean murmured. “Or Mikasa, or even _Jaeger_.”

“I actually think Eren cut his arm when he got the last dummy, but his healing time is, like, ridiculous levels of fast.”

Something about the statement struck Jean, so much so that he turned his head and cried out at the pain of the stitches pulling against each other beneath his bandages. Marco stopped him with a firm push on his shoulder, nudging him back into the stiff mattress.

 _Eren_ and then _he got the last dummy_.

It made his chest constrict, his throat tighten like Jaeger had his goddamned hands wrapped around it himself. A big fat _you suck_ slapped across his face, _you’re not good enough, you’ll never make it_ —

“Don’t fucking tell me _Eren Jaeger_ beat me,” Jean hissed through gritted teeth, pushing himself onto his elbows with all the force he could manage.

“Jean! Jean, stop moving, please, you’re going to rip your stitches out.” Marco grappled for his hand again, then threaded their fingers together. Somehow, it calmed Jean, just enough, and he fell back to the pillow beneath him. “Don’t you have bigger things to worry about than Eren beating you? Like, I don’t know, the gash on your face? Your sprained ankle maybe?”

His voice was sharp, but he was smiling. Always smiling, kind of like Jean’s mother in a weird, comforting way.

“Ugh,” Jean groaned. “I just…”

“You what?”

Jean shook his head. “Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“Hey.” Marco squeezed his hand. It should have been uncomfortable—he barely knew the kid, for fuck’s sake—but Jean squeezed back anyway. “I bet it’s not. You can tell me.”

But how was Jean supposed to say it without sounding like a petty asshole? Not that he wasn’t on his worse days, but how could he put it into words that being in the top ten trainees meant _nothing_ to Eren? Number one or number eighty didn’t matter to him, because he was dragging his ass to the Survey Corps either way. Jean _had_ to be in the top ten to make it into the Military Police and get himself and his mother to the safety of Wall Sina. There _was_ no other option.

And so he told Marco all of it, even if speaking made his head throb and unwilling tears stream down his cheeks from the pain. It was the most he’d spoken in the months since his arrival, and when he shut his eyes bracing himself to be told that he never _should_ talk because he was a spiteful, selfish idiot, it never came.

“I know how you feel,” said Marco, his voice small. “I wasn’t lying, you know? When I said I wanted to serve the king. I want to do that, more than anything, and if serving the king gets my family out of rural farming life and into something more stable, then of course I’m going to join for the benefits too.”

He told Jean about his family back in Jinae. He was the oldest of four kids: four-year-old twin brothers Adrian and Leo, and a sister named Téa who turned one a week before he left for training (he explained the age difference with a laugh: “I was an oops baby”). His family lived in a very small house on an orchard, and he used to work on it in the summer when the trees were filled with plums and peaches and fruits Jean had only ever dreamed of eating. He self-consciously blamed his freckles on too much sun exposure from working it and seemed to have no idea that they were actually kind of endearing.

“You know I haven’t even visited home since we got here? Not for holidays, not on days off, nothing.”

“Oh?” Jean lifted his eyebrows, cringed when he felt the tug of the stitches over his nose pulling against each other.

They’d been allowed two weeks off in the winter to spend St. Sina’s Day and the start of the new year with their families, and Jean had jumped at the chance to sleep in his own bed instead of a rickety bunk and eat his mother’s cooking instead of the bland, meager portions doled out in the mess hall. He’d kind of just assumed that everyone who wasn’t living in a refugee camp prior to training did the same.

“Yeah,” Marco confirmed, shaking his head idly. “I’ve written to my parents, but going home is just… a whole different story. They told me my sister _talks_ now. When I left, she barely could say ‘mama’ and ‘dada,’ and now she can say so many more words, and she’s _walking_ , and…”

He let out a derisive snort. “I feel like going home would just be a whole two weeks of me being sad about how she’s growing up and I don’t even get to be part of her memories—my brothers’ too. You’re an only child, aren’t you?”

Jean nodded, quiet.

“I think most people here are, other than Connie, maybe,” Marco breathed, “so I don’t get to talk about this a lot. Saying it out loud makes me realize how stupid I am, too busy angsting about missing part of her life to realize that’s making me miss even _more_ of it.”

“You’re not stupid,” Jean tried. He knew that coming from a spoiled only child, it probably meant nothing, but it earned him a shy smile anyway.

Marco blinked once, twice, then sighed. “Sorry for unloading my whole, like, laundry list of problems on you while you’re the one sitting here injured,” he chuckled. “What I _meant_ to say before all that mess came tumbling out is that my parents worked really hard for us. I feel like I owe them something in return, you know? Whether that’s making the Military Police or just actually going home to visit for once, I guess.”

Jean _did_ know, in a way, because that was exactly how he felt about his mother. That was why he’d returned to her, however briefly it had been.

He never had a father, not in any way but biological. Whoever the guy was, he left to have another family in the inner wall right after Jean was born, leaving his mom with nothing but a broken heart, a two-month-old, and a house they couldn’t afford. She spent every day for years working odd job upon odd job, with everyone from merchants to blacksmiths, even the Wagners in their little grocery, until keeping themselves safe and alive with a roof over their heads wasn’t so much of a struggle.

He knew the feeling of wanting to push past his own selfishness to give something back to her for all of her sacrifice. Life in the capital city paid for with his Military Police stipend would never fully repay her for being the reason he was alive, but damn it, it was a start.

“I know,” Jean confirmed, hardly above a whisper. It still hurt to talk, and the ache from his head seemed to be moving down into his throat the more he did. Without looking, he groped lamely for the cup sitting next to the extinguished lantern, nearly knocking it over until Marco stopped it with reflexes he usually reserved for training.

“Look at you making a mess,” he chided with a quiet smile. “Hold still for a second.”

And again, it should have been uncomfortable or embarrassing—Jean, bedridden and bloody and unable to even drink without someone helping him hold the cup—and if it were anyone else doing the cup holding, it probably would have, but Marco’s smile was gentle and warm and not at all patronizing. He took special care not to let the water spill all over the place, and it was as comfortable as laying beaten up in a hospital wing could have been.

Jean supposed that maybe it was because every day for half a year, Marco had been subject to watching him ungracefully wake up in their little bunk, or because Jean was there during the winter when they finally got to have meat for dinner and Marco’s Jinae-bred herbivore stomach was so unused to it that he got violently ill for an entire weekend and had to be spoon-fed lukewarm tea and vegetable broth between bouts of puking.

And maybe they hadn’t spoken much until then, but they’d already been through a hell of a lot more than Jean had even realized until that very moment.

Whatever the reason, being able to relax and shut his eyes while Marco slowly tipped the cup to his lips worked wonders to soothe his headache, and by the time it was drained and put back on the table, Jean was back to drowsy and nearly comfortable again.

“We’ll join the Military Police together,” he murmured, to Marco’s soft laughter.

“Yeah? You and I?”

“Fuck yeah. And we’ll dorm together and shit. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

He hadn’t meant to be so obvious about hearing it—if the conversation between Marco and Sasha was real and not a residual dream, that was—but it tumbled out in a sleepy haze, and he didn’t have time to regret it before Marco’s cheeks darkened with a deep blush and he rubbed self-consciously at the bridge of his nose.

“Oh, uh, you were awake for that?”

“Partially.” Jean shrugged. “Didn’t know if I was dreaming or what.”

“Haha, oh jeez. That’s… that’s… yeah. Sorry if that’s, like, weird or anything.”

“We’ve hung out almost every single day for months. I think that might qualify as friend territory.”

Marco smiled, and it was like the sunrise and Saturday afternoons and biting into fresh fruit all at once. Had he not been stuck in the infirmary with a head wound and splitting pain every time he so much as twitched a muscle, Jean would have found his sketchbook and drawn it on the spot.

The silence that followed was one of mutual content. Jean shut his eyes to the last rays of sundown beaming in through the window. His breathing evened out, and he debated on whether or not he should fall asleep, but if he did, then he would inevitably wake up to no Marco at his bedside, and that wasn’t something he felt like doing just yet, not when he was fresh off acquiring his new friend. And so he let his eyes flutter open again, to watch the tranquil smile that slipped its way onto Marco’s face as he looked out at the horizon through the window, because this was his friend, he had a _friend_ , and he wouldn’t say it aloud for fear of sounding like too much of a sap, but that was actually kind of cool.

Suddenly, without warning, something Sasha said echoed between Jean’s ears.

“She said you caught me.”

Marco startled a bit; he probably thought Jean had fallen back asleep. “Huh?”

“Sasha,” Jean clarified. “Before, when I was still waking up. She said ‘if you hadn’t have caught him,’ and then you stopped her.”

The look on Marco’s face wasn’t one Jean was used to: like he was anxious, caught in a lie. Honesty usually came so easily to him—maybe not Jean levels of it, never brutal or brash but always encouraging in his sincerity: a quiet reminder to Armin that he may not have been physically agile but he was the most brilliant of them all here, a reassurance of the inverse to Connie there. Seeing him jumpy like that, with his eyes averted and his hands fidgeting in his lap, was jarring.

“I, uh… ha. You, uh…” He crossed his arms over his chest to quell the shaking of his hands and looked down at the knees of his uniform pants. The white was marred with grass stains and ground-in mud, marks that didn’t generally come from 3DMG training. He had to have been on the ground at some point, on his knees. “Maybe you _were_ still dreaming.”

Jean let his eyes travel further up, to where Marco’s jacket was missing from his shoulders and draped over the back of his chair, to where he hadn’t noticed his shirt stained dark red and brown in patches across his chest.

“Marco,” he pressed on a whisper.

They stared at each other in silence again, only this time the tension was thick with words that neither of them quite knew how to say. Jean kept his expression as hard as the stabbing pain in his head would let him; Marco looked at the floor and bit his lip so hard that the skin around his teeth turned white and left four perfectly aligned indents in their wake.

“None of us saw you hit the tree,” he said finally. “I think most of us were shocked. Like, one second we were all watching Eren, and the next there’s this horrible _crack_ and we didn’t know where it came from or what to do about it.”

Jean nodded minutely. _Go on_.

“I was hanging back closer to the ground with Armin and Christa, and by the time we finally figured out that the noise was a person, you were falling past us, and I just…” Marco shook his head like he was trying to dispel of a bad memory, and his voice came a little more choked. “I didn’t even know if it was you or not, but either way, I couldn’t just let you fall. I had to shoot my gear almost to the ground to catch you in time, and I was…”

He stopped again to catch his breath and wiped a hasty arm over his eyes to wipe away a tear before it could fall down his cheek.

“I was afraid you were going to die,” he said. “You weren’t moving, and there was _so much blood_.”

“Hey,” Jean attempted, forcing a foreign, reassuring curve onto his lips. “I’m alive now, aren’t I? You saved my life.”

Slowly, Marco lifted his head again. A sad smile crossed his face.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I just got scared, that’s all. The nurse said it was just because head wounds just bleed a lot and… I’m just… _God_ , I’m so glad you’re okay. I don’t know what any of us would have done if something worse happened. It’s stupid, probably, but I don’t know what _I_ would have done without you. We don’t talk as much as everyone else, but I didn’t want you to go home and me to miss out on being friends with you. I’m nothing if not, y’know, horrendously selfish.”

For the second time, Jean whispered his name, but this time, it came with outstretched hands, and Marco immediately reached forward and pulled him to his chest. Even if it hurt, he held on tight.

“You’re so _stupid_ ,” he murmured against Jean’s hair. Jean could smell his own blood dried on Marco’s shirt, fisted between tightly gripped fingers, but he held his breath and stomached it because there was no way in hell he was letting go just yet. “Don’t scare me like that again, you jerk.”

“Um.”

Another voice in the doorway, too rough to be Connie and too low to be Sasha. Chancing a brief look up, Jean saw Eren standing in the dim light of the torches lining the hallway, a folded shirt in one hand and a small bag in the other.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked unsurely.

 _Of course you are_ , Jean wanted to shout at the last goddamned person he was hoping to see at a moment like this. For a brief second, he almost hoped he was dreaming again.

“No, you’re fine,” replied Marco, but he didn’t let go. Jean was grateful for that, at least. He let his head droop from his stiff neck, against the side of Marco’s arm.

“Oh, well... Sasha and Connie are on cleanup duty, so they told me to bring you this.” Eren extended both hands, and the bag opened just enough so that two buns and some steamed carrots wrapped in a napkin were visible. “Leftovers from dinner, in case you were hungry, and Connie got you some clean clothes from your bunk. And, um, we have to get back to the barracks soon, so if you needed to bathe…”

“Oh gosh, right, I didn’t even realize—” Marco let go to look down at his stained clothes, and Jean silently mourned the loss of contact as he settled back down. “I’m filthy, aren’t I? Thanks, Eren.”

Eren smiled at him slightly, but he didn’t say anything for a long time as he handed Marco the clothes and food. It took until Marco was unfolding up the clean shirt that he looked at Jean, then Marco, and asked, “Do you mind if I talk to him alone for a second?”

Dread rushed through Jean’s veins. He probably wouldn’t put it past Eren to punch him in the face for being an idiot and reopen his stitches, kill him from blood loss or head trauma.

But Marco shrugged and smiled back. “Go for it,” he said. “I guess I should get back anyway. Are you gonna be alright for the night, Jean?”

“Yes, _Mom_ ,” Jean huffed in return. Only Marco knew that it wasn’t much of an insult. “Goodnight.”

“Get better,” said Marco, “or Sasha’s gonna beat you up,” and he was gone with a smile and a wink, breezing through the open doorway, past a stony-faced Eren.

“If you’re here to kick my ass, I’m pretty sure a tree already did that,” Jean grumbled under his breath.

“I’m not,” said Eren. He didn’t move from his spot against the door.

“Look, I don’t feel like arguing. My head hurts. I’m sorry I took your glory or whatever, are we done?”

Eren rolled his eyes. “I’m not here for that either.”

“Then what _are_ you here for?”

“To see if you’re okay, you fucking moron. I was… Goddamnit, we were all worried about you, okay?” Eren avoided eye contact like he would turn to stone if he looked Jean’s way, but he still stepped further into the room and leaned against the opposite wall. He kicked a boot against the floor and watched as it left a small scuff in its wake. “I can’t argue with you if you’re dead, or like, sitting here with a broken back or some shit. Who the hell else am I going to get my frustration out on? Mikasa would punch me out, I can’t ever stay mad at Armin…”

“Are you saying you’d be nice to me if I’d have broken my back? How patronizing of you, Jaeger.”

Jean cracked half a smile. Eren did too, grudgingly.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Eren said. “Or whatever. Whatever.”

He looked at Jean for the first time since Marco left, and the slight smile on his lips was offset by the slightest veins rimming the bright blue-green of his eyes. Slowly, he stepped forward until he was right at Jean’s bedside, and he flopped indelicately onto the chair Marco had been sitting in before.

“You _are_ stupid, Marco’s not wrong about that.”

“You just come here to insult me?”

Eren snorted a little puff of air through his nostrils, and the quiet settled between them for a minute or two before he turned his head to Jean and lifted an eyebrow.

“Is this really all about Mikasa?” he asked. “This stupid-ass fight between us?”

Jean laughed, low enough in his throat that it started to get sore again, and then he stopped. “It might have been at one point when I was jealous over her and, ya know, _twelve_ ,” he said as if he wasn’t barely thirteen and he didn’t still steal glances at Mikasa across the mess hall some nights. “Now it’s… I don’t know. Pride. Some shit like that. The Survey Corps and the Military Police aren’t exactly best friends with each other, are they?”

“Not quite,” Eren chuckled.

“I still don’t get it, you know.”

“I don’t expect you to. No offense, rich kid from Trost, but you weren’t there four years ago.” Eren shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I don’t get your reasoning either.”

Jean hummed. “Agree to disagree then.”

“Guess so.”

In the distance, the tower in the middle of the camp chimed its nightly bell, and Eren rose to his feet with a sigh.

“I’ve got about five minutes to get back to the cabin before Shadis plucks my eyebrows out hair by hair,” he said, extending an arm. It took a moment of awkward fumbling for Jean to get that he was trying to low-five again. “Get the fuck better so we can have a rematch, asshole.”

Jean pulled his bloodied knuckles back to his sides.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a quiet laugh. “I’ll kill you one of these days, Jaeger.”


	3. if being afraid is a crime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who almost forgot it was update day because finals are satan incarnate!
> 
> anyway! this passed 130 hits which is exciting for a baby fic in a huge fandom that i've barely contributed to before so thank youuu <333
> 
> warnings for this chapter: nightmares involving death? ymmv

** 850 **

Light caught in the weirdest ways in the barracks at night.

Jean had been trying for half an hour to shade the glow from the bedside lantern on the bare, pale skin of his knee beneath his sleep shorts, but it had been thirty minutes in vain—the flickering light changed too much, and his bony legs were far too fidgety to get a decent sketch of. His hands were covered in smudged charcoal for the thousandth time, smeared on his pajamas and, more than likely, his face.

The wooden frame of the bunk shifted, the thin mattress pushed against his own sagging beneath the weight of another. Jean’s hand slipped and the charcoal slid erratically over the page, a thick black line slicing the drawing of his spindly leg in half.

“Sorry,” said Marco with a laugh so airy that Jean knew instinctually that he only halfway meant it. “You okay?”

“M’fine,” Jean murmured, tossing the charcoal stick aside and dropping the sketchbook to his lap. “It was a shitty drawing anyway. What’s up?”

“Actually, I’m here to ask you the same. Everyone’s outside celebrating the last official day of training and you’re inside. Drawing. All alone. In the dark.”

“I have a lantern,” Jean mumbled petulantly. A broad, sweeping gesture towards the light in question did nothing to get rid of the raised eyebrow Marco was shooting him.

“Uh  _huh_. Everyone’s talking about how their final tests went, and you’re not exactly one to pass up an opportunity to boast,” Marco coaxed. “And I know for a fact that you draw when you’re anxious.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ve spent every day for three years with you, Jean. I know things.”

Marco’s smile was tranquil, open. The lantern made his big, dark eyes look even warmer than usual, like tea that had been soaking in the leaves for too long, strong coffee before the milk and sugar.

“Also a little birdy may have told me they saw you sneak back inside after dinner.”

Jean hazarded a look over at him. “Was this a ponytailed birdy talking with her mouth full of stolen food, by chance?”

“Might’ve been,” Marco offered cryptically. He pulled his socked feet beneath him, leaned forward a hair. “You wanna tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Jean didn’t have to look up to know that Marco was pulling out the sympathetic puppy dog eyes; somehow it made him spill, even though he knew that Marco wouldn’t dare to push the topic any further, damn him. “Ugh. Same shit, different day. You already know.”

 _“Ah_ ,” Marco breathed. “If it’s any reassurance, I caught a glimpse of you during the final test and you were doing incredible.”

“Top ten incredible?”

“I think you being my best friend makes me a biased judge.” Marco’s long finger poked lightly at Jean’s arm. Jean responded with a sock to his shoulder. “Ow! Yes, top ten incredible, okay? Rude.”

“No, now you said you’re biased, I don’t fuckin’ believe you!” Jean laughed. He dodged Marco’s elbow to his side by diving forward and ending up with a mouthful of blanket. His sketchbook landed somewhere between them, halfway buried in the sheets. “Fuck you, man, I’m asking Eren.”

“Because  _that’s_  going to be a less biased opinion.” Marco’s eyes were all but sparkling with mirth when Jean peered from beneath the mound of blanket to look up at him, his hands wandering over to the half-concealed pad of parchment. “Can I see what you were drawing?”

Jean shrugged the blanket off of his shoulder. “S’crap, but yeah, whatever,” he said. “Was practicing light and shadows and all that kinda shit. The better stuff’s on the other pages.”

Marco slowly peeled back the cover, and Jean swallowed the lump in his throat. He never let anyone see his sketchbook; not like he had anything to hide, necessarily, but because his drawings were and had always been his inner feelings and not the cocky, arrogant Military Police bastard he liked so much to pretend that he really was.

This book in particular was full of scraps of other drawings: things he liked too much to discard with the rest or things he wanted to finish later. Things that actually meant something.

His heart thudded watching Marco read through it, the look on his face changing with each flip of the page. He smiled at a picture of Sasha swinging between the trees, laughed at one of Commander Shadis with devil horns sprouted from his bald head, and frowned a little wistfully at a small sketch that Jean had done early on in training when he was homesick: his mother standing in the doorway of their house with an inviting smile on her face.

“These are incredible,” Marco said. “You’re amazing, Jean.”

Jean snorted, self-conscious. “Yeah, wait ‘til you get to the one of Connie’s head on a bird’s body. That one’s  _truly_  incredible.”

Marco’s lips quirked into a smirk for half a second before he turned another page and his jaw dropped open just enough to be noticeable, eyes going misty and wet. He stared at the page for a long time before Jean craned his neck to see what the hell was making him react like that.

Of all things, it was a shitty stick figure drawing of the two of them high-fiving. In Jean’s messy scrawl, the words  _BEST BUDS!_  were written in thought bubbles over their heads. It was stupid, the stupidest thing in the book, even more so than bird-Connie, and yet Marco lingered on it for longer than any of the others.

“Uh,” Jean started. “In my defense, I was just out of the infirmary and still fucked up from a tree trunk to the head when I did that one.”

“No,” Marco said abruptly. “It’s my favorite of them all.”

“Your  _favorite_? Honestly, Marco, I have a couple decent sketches of you if you—”

“I saw them,” Marco interrupted. “I like this one the best.”

Jean stared at him blankly over his shoulder. It was two circles and a bunch of scribbled lines. What was there to love about it? “Why?”

“It’s us,” Marco clarified. “What says ‘Jean and Marco’ more than a couple of dumb stick figures high-fiving?”

Again, Jean stared. “A lot of things. I could draw a good one of us for you, dude, come on.”

“Stop being so stubborn, ,” Marco chuckled. He leaned in and bopped Jean on the end of the nose with a wink that made Jean bury his flushed cheeks in his arms. “If you hate it so much, can I keep it?”

“Go for it, you fuckin’ weirdo,” mumbled Jean into his sleeve.

With a look on his face that was halfway between smug and genuinely pleased, Marco tucked the drawing into the breast pocket of his uniform jacket, perfectly folded up next to his pillow. Jean’s, in contrast, had been balled up beneath his as a last-ditch resort to prop himself up while he drew.

Marco swung his legs around, off of the bed and back onto the wooden floor where his discarded shoes laid. He bent down to pick up one, deftly untied the laces with one hand, and tugged it over his right foot.

“You coming outside? It’s not really my thing, but Ymir somehow managed to steal a bottle of rum from one of the instructors’ offices and everyone’s passing it around the bonfire.”

Staying in bed had done wonders for soothing his nerves about tomorrow’s results, but Jean couldn’t in good conscience pass up the opportunity to drown his nerves with something stronger than silence and therapeutic doodles. He had only ever had alcohol once: a week off spent at home for the holidays months back, visiting his cousins’ house—it had taken three glasses of the mulled wine they’d bought from a corner shop to bury his jealousy over their unending stories about life in Wall Sina.

Jean was out of bed and slipping his feet into his own boots before Marco even finished tying his first.

 

* * *

 

“Um… Sasha! Truth or dare?”

“Armin, I trusted you!” Sasha whined, flopping dramatically (or drunkenly, it was honestly hard to tell with her) over Mikasa, who was stoically situated between them. The rum bottle had passed her more than it had anyone else it seemed, and yet wasn’t even slurring her words, but then again, Mikasa Ackerman: Wonder Girl wasn’t just anyone else.

Jean didn’t know when his raging crush on her turned into quiet appreciation, but it was nice to be able to look at her without his words crowding together in his mouth and coming out a garbled mess.

His head was surprisingly clear that night—he hadn’t had nearly as much booze as Sasha or Connie or Reiner, who were all sloppy, giggling messes, and the couple of mouthfuls in his system only served to loosen him up, keep him from disappearing into his shell too much. Marco at his side hadn’t had a drop, but his cheeks were still flushed red and pretty from the combination of breezy night air and warmth from the bonfire in the middle of their uneven makeshift circle.

Across the way, Sasha had successfully completed ten cartwheels and it showed. She was covered in dirt and glaring mockingly at a sheepish Armin over Mikasa’s shoulder as she cried, “Reiner! Truth or dare!”

“Dare!”

“I dare y—er… I didn’t… I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Mikasa leaned into Sasha’s side and whispered something Jean couldn’t make out because one hand was strategically poised over her lips. Whatever it was, it made Sasha snort like a pig and Mikasa lean back onto her hands with the barest hint of a conspiratorial smile.

“Um, I dare you to— _god_ —give Bertl a lap dance!”

Bertholdt paled; Reiner’s grin mirrored those of the titans in the books they’d read over the years.

“I’m not watching this shit,” Jean groaned, burying his warm face in the fabric of Marco’s tunic. With his eyes shut, he heard Bertholdt squawk indignantly, followed by Reiner’s brash cackle.

Marco’s shoulder shifted, and Jean was afraid for a moment that he was going to shrug him off, leave him to cover his eyes with his own dirty hands, but an uncertain arm wrapped around his shoulders, guiding his closed eyes to rest in the plane of shirt between his arm and his chest. He smelled clean, like soap and citrus, like the Jinae scent had never left his skin. Whatever it was, Jean moved ever closer, breathed it in until he was more drunk on the smell of fruit than the rum in his stomach.

Somewhere beyond their little bubble, Reiner had finished his dare, if Sasha’s slightly pained, uncomfortable laughter was anything to go by. Jean lifted his head so he could see again, but he kept his shoulder pressed close to Marco’s.

“Bodt,” Reiner called, his voice full of haughty pride, “truth or dare, pal.”

“Truth,” Marco said with a smug smile of his own. “I know better than to say dare with you.”

“ _Oh-ho-ho_ , we’ve got a badass here,” Reiner mocked. He tilted his head back and forth with every word, only shut up when Annie socked him in the arm and downed a long mouthful of rum that she didn’t even wince at. “If that’s how you’re gonna play, then tell the truth: have you ever had a crush on someone here?”

Jean could  _feel_  the tension that seeped its way throughout Marco’s body. His pupils grew tiny in the flame of the bonfire, arm dropped from where it had still been around Jean’s shoulder, fingers tensed and digging trenches where they were beginning to ball up in the dirt below.

“Uh,” he said, quiet and measured. Reiner grinned like the giant, scraggly cat that got the cream. “Yeah. I have.”

He said no more, jaw set squarely. An uncharacteristic glower was shot in Reiner’s direction, and Reiner shrugged with a smile that said he already knew the answer. Everyone else was making various faces of overdramatic shock, though the audible  _oohs_  and  _ahs_  were mostly coming from Sasha and Connie.

Jean took the moment between questions to lean close to Marco’s ear and ask, “Who is it?”

He watched Marco’s jaw tense for a moment until he breathed an exasperated sigh between his lips. “No one.”

“C’mon, you know who I used to like.”  
  
“You were obvious about your crush on Mikasa for two years, Jean,” Marco sighed. “Please stop? I just… I don’t feel like it getting out. I’m sorry. Maybe, um, another time.”

Jean dropped it, at least for the moment, in favor examining the circle of trainees for whoever it could be. Mina was cute, all spunk and fire; she would have been a good fit for Marco’s soothing personality if he could look past the fact that they kind of looked alike. Christa was beautiful, too, though Ymir’s arm wrapped low around her waist and her lips pressed softly to her temple kind of threw a wrench into that possibility.

And shit, what if it wasn’t even a girl that Marco liked? Not that it was even a problem—hell, the first time the camp played Truth or Dare, Jean had ended up straddling Nac Tius’s lap with his tongue shoved down his throat by Sasha’s request, and it wasn’t  _entirely_  bad for a first kiss.

Snorting, Jean reasoned that as long as it wasn’t Eren, he didn’t mind  _who_  Marco’s little heart desired, and with the topic finally dropped, Marco elbowed him in the ribs, his edgy expression swapped out for an overly innocent smile.

“Jean, truth or dare?”

He was pretty sure stripping down to his underwear and running a lap around the cabins was Marco’s way of punishing him for his curiosity.

 

* * *

 

At least the alcohol faded from his system quickly—the same couldn’t be said for Reiner, whose drunken snoring echoed throughout the room like a boar in the wild. By the time they were settled for bed, Jean was completely sober again, and his mind was back to the racing it had been doing before, the next day’s graduation ceremony heavy on his mind.

He wondered how his mother felt, or his cousins, or the kids who used to chase him through the back alleys of Trost and call him every name in the book. Pride, envy, and shame, he hoped, respectively.

It was dark in the cabin, not a single lantern lit and the only source of light in the room the faint glow of the moon through cracks and holes in the thick curtains. It was far enough into June that the midnight air was warm and stuffy, but not as stifling as it would have been once July rolled around in a couple of weeks. In the distance, the cicadas began to hum their droning lullaby, and Jean leaned backwards onto his pillow to listen.

“Graduation’s tomorrow,” he said to the air above the bunk. He had no idea if Marco was even awake still—most of the guys had knocked out right after they’d come back in from the bonfire in anticipation of the next day’s results, but he couldn’t seem to fall asleep. An electrifying mixture of adrenaline, excitement, and fear coursed through his body and made it impossible. Every time he shut his eyes, he got another vision of himself standing at the graduation ceremony.

Once in the top ten with Marco. Once, the both of them standing behind the front line. Once, only Marco among the top ten. And once, maybe most terrifying of all, him in the top and Marco not there at all.

“It is,” Marco answered finally, feeble and drained but still conscious enough to angle his head towards the sound and stare at Jean with half-lidded eyes inches away.

“Do you think we’re top ten?”

“I think  _you’re_  top ten. Me… not so sure.”

“Marco…”

“What?”

Jean sat up on his elbows so he could see Marco’s silhouette at his side, bathed in the faint moonlight that painted the barracks in dim blacks and blues. His head and shoulders were propped up on pillows next to Jean’s, and his hair was rumpled and curling at the ends from not having enough time to dry between bathing and settling down for the night. In the dark, Jean could make out the beginnings of a frown on his face.

“You’re not…” Jean started, but his mouth dried up before he could get the right words out. He tried again, “You’re not thinking about other branches, are you?”

“What? Of course not. If I make it, it’s you and me in the Military Police all the way,” Marco said. He sounded different than usual—more hesitant than Jean had heard him since that first night outside of the mess hall when he’d seemed nervous to even speak aloud, or the night in the hospital wing when he couldn’t find the right words to tell Jean that he saved his life. Even more than just a couple of hours ago when he’d steadfastly refused to tell Jean who it was that he liked. “But I have to be realistic, Jean. There are a  _lot_  of good trainees this year—Reiner, Bert, Annie, Mikasa, Eren,  _you_ … you’re shoo-ins. Then there’s Connie and Sasha, Ymir and Christa, Mina, Thomas… Armin’s improved so much in the last few months that he’s got a fighting chance…”

“Marco.”

He huffed. “The point is, I hope I’ll make it, but if I don’t, I need a back-up plan. That’s…. that’s all I meant.”

Jean nudged Marco’s shoulder with his own. “You’re not gonna  _need_  a back-up plan, but go with the Garrison—you cheaped out on me tonight, I’ve never seen you drunk before. When we’re in the Interior, we’re gonna find a shitty pub and I’m gonna buy you a beer and we’re gonna get wasted together, deal?”

“Jean,” Marco pressed.

“Marco,” Jean mimicked. “ _Deal?_ ”

A heavy sigh. “Deal,” he said, and then moments later, “Ymir threw it.”

“What?” Jean asked, raising an eyebrow in the dark.

“The final assignment, the one that’s determining the top ten?” Marco clarified. “She, uh, was talking about it while we put out the bonfire earlier. She threw it so Christa can make it to the Military Police instead of her.”

“What?” Jean said again, and then, “That’s so stupid. She’s easily in the top ten. How bad did she do?”

Marco shrugged. “Bad enough that Shadis called her over after we all finished and chewed her out for ten minutes about crumbling under pressure and how it was going to get her killed in the field.”

Jean couldn’t understand it. Ymir would have been safe for sure, the kind of safety that most people within the walls would have literally  _killed_  for, and she threw it away. Maybe he didn’t know much about the whole concept of romantic love yet, but giving up a future in the security of the Interior? Was that something he could do, if it meant keeping the one he loved safe?

The room went deathly silent for a long time, heavier than the calm, quiet ones they’d shared in the past. When several minutes went by without a word, Jean figured that he should probably take the opportunity to push the conversation from his mind and try to catch some sleep before the morning came, but right as his eyes drifted shut and before he got another vision of what was to come the next night, he heard Marco’s voice again, much smaller.

“I was thinking about the Survey Corps as a back-up plan.”

Jean sat up with a roared,  _“what?!”_  that got him shushed by at least three other people. He didn’t care. He couldn’t believe his ears, that  _Marco_  just said that. He and Eren may have called an ceasefire in the infirmary, but it didn’t mean that Jean thought the Survey Corps was any less of a terrible idea.

“ _What_?” he whispered, quieter now. “Why  _them_?”

“You’re not gonna want to hear this, but Eren isn’t totally off-base. The Survey Corps, they’re not suicidal, they’re just…”

“Brave to the point of stupidity?”

Marco shrugged. “They’re curious. They want to learn about the titans. It’s dangerous work, but it’s necessary, isn’t it? We can’t just fight them until the end of time.”

Jean snorted in disbelief, crossed his hands behind his head, and flopped back onto his pillow. He swallowed enough saliva to hold back the lump in his throat and scoffed, “I can’t believe you’re joining them.”

“I’m  _not_ ,” Marco insisted. “I told you a million times, Jean: the Military Police is my first choice, but if I get beat out for the top ten…”

“You’re gonna risk your life for them.”

“That’s a possibility, yes.”

“I can’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re my best friend.”

“You’re mine, too.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“If I can help it, I won’t. It’s just a back-up plan. I promise.”

Jean shut his eyes. For the first time in a long time, he felt genuine fear in his bones, all over the one person who made him less scared in the first place.

Marco considering the Survey Corps, of all people.  _Marco_? He was one of the good ones, one of the ones who, after all these years, still wanted to devote his life to the king—and now, apparently, the titans.

Jean couldn’t give him up. He wouldn’t. He refused to. They were going to live together in the interior, he was going to meet Marco’s family, Marco was going to meet his mom, and they were going to be best friends for life.

They had to be.

A lone tear slipped off the side of his face and left a warm trail down his neck. He wiped at it hastily, and when he moved to put his hand back down, he found not blanket, not mattress, not sheet, but something warmer, heavier in its place.

It had been a rare occasion, hardly happened more than a couple of times since the night in the infirmary, but when Marco extended a hand, Jean knew to take it. It was solidarity, comfort. It was holding him back from getting into another shouting match with Eren or Connie or Reiner. It was wanting to speak but not having the words.

It was  _I’m sorry_. It was  _I mean it_.

It was  _I know you are_ , and  _I just don’t want to lose you, you dipshit._

It was coming home.

His fingers threaded through Marco’s, and he clasped tight.

“You do, by the way,” Marco said, and the tense silence dissipated slowly but surely.

Jean kept squeezing his hand in short patterns that synchronized with the thrumming of his pulse. “I do what?” he asked.

Marco chuckled, quiet and soothing. “You snore.”

Jean blew a hasty puff of air through his nose. “Sorry about the last three years then.”

“I’m not,” Marco said. He ran a warm thumb across Jean’s knuckles and fell asleep almost immediately, the moonlight shining on the deep black of his hair like a halo.

Jean kept a tight grip on Marco’s hand, and with the other, reached for the slip of paper beneath his pillow. Once a sheet in a sketchbook, then a scrawled note from his mother, and then a faded, smeared reminder that he was loved.

_Whatever happens, I will always love you, no matter what._

He squeezed Marco’s palm once more, then ran his thumb across the folded note, and closed his eyes with a prayer that he wouldn’t face any more nightmares tonight.

 

* * *

 

_It was crowded, too damn crowded, lining the streets, the corners, the town square. People everywhere, milling about aimlessly, stopping at the edge of the cobblestone road to shield their eyes from the harsh, dying rays of sundown peeking over the edge of the wall._

_Jean pushed through, his boots too heavy beneath him. He shoved through a crowd of bickering old men and their wide-eyed, younger wives, grit his teeth as their voices caught his ears._

_“How many of them came back this time?”_

_“Can’t be much more than half.”_

_“Terrible. Think about their families! That must be devastating.”_

_“Screw their families! Think about all of our hard-earned money they’re wasting on fruitless missions! What’s the point in paying the lazy bastards if nothing comes of it?”_

_If one of the men got a knee to the groin care of one Jean Kirschstein, followed by a brash flash of the Military Police patch adorned on his sleeve, it was nothing more than an honest mistake._

_He ducked between curious children, around teary-eyed mothers and fathers, through skeptical spectators and clueless townsfolk until he emerged at the mouth of the road. Green cloaks, proud white and blue wings emblazoned on their backs, dozens of them on horseback were riding right towards him. He craned his neck, arched onto his tiptoes, frantically searched the downcast eyes of every approaching soldier for dark hair and long legs and freckles and please god where is he I need to see him where is he where is he I need him I need him I lo—_

_“Jean Kirschstein, am I correct?”_

_Heavy hooves came to a stop right before Jean’s feet, and a blond with a squared jaw and sharp cheekbones dismounted. His movements were slow and calculating, as if any twitch out of perfect synchronization would scare Jean away. When he saluted, the clenched fist over his heart mixed with the somber expression on what would have otherwise been a handsome face looked more like he was offering up the very heart beating beneath his ribcage._

_Jean’s clammy hands managed a weak salute back, all of his pulse points hammering with dread and sick, misguided hope that grew dimmer and dimmer the longer his heart pounded against his fist._

_“Y-yes, Commander.”_

_The commander’s right hand fell back to his side. The left reached for his horse’s saddle, pulled a mound of thick green material from where it had been draped around its neck._

_No words were needed; Jean could see it as clear as the blue of the commander’s eyes._

_I’m sorry. He didn’t make it back. I’m so sorry._

_The fleece was heavy in Jean’s hands, spattered in red and dark brown. It still smelled like him, the sweet citrus of Jinae that always clung to him, even years after leaving the village, buried beneath mud and heavy, coppery blood._

_“Marco Bodt was an incredible asset to the Survey Corps,” the commander said._

_It hurt worse than any head-on collision he ever could imagine—Jean nearly lost his grip on the cloak, almost dropped it onto the undeserving cobblestone beneath his feet. He choked and brought it to his face, inhaled sweet fruit and exhaled coppery, bitter blood and dirt._

_“His remarkable courage and selflessness in the face of certain death have gained us invaluable insight and knowledge into the workings of the titans.” The commander’s voice hitched—barely, but Jean heard the quiet, wavering breath he inhaled between his words. “You should be very proud to have known him.”_

_“No,” Jean breathed. “He’s not—he’s—please tell me you’re—”_

_“I am deeply, deeply sorry for your loss, Mr. Kirschstein. He will be sorely missed.”_

_Jean screamed, guttural and primal._

_And everything went black._

 

* * *

 

Never in his life had Jean Kirschstein been happier to be awoken by the slamming door echoing throughout the barracks.

He frantically rolled onto his side, mind an unending stream of  _please tell me he’s here please tell me he’s okay_ , and breathed a sigh of relief so immense it sprung tears to his eyes when he saw Marco, sleep-rumpled and adorable and, most importantly, undeniably  _alive_  next to him.

Marco rubbed an eye with his closed fist and stifled a yawn behind his arm. “Mornin’,” he said, then, “How’d you sleep?”

The memory of the dream got pushed hastily to the back of Jean’s mind with everything else he didn’t feel like dealing with.  _No bad thoughts_  was his motto of the day.

It was Saturday. They were graduating. Tomorrow night, if all went as planned, he and Marco would be joining the Military Police together and never have to worry about a thing ever again.

(If his dream, his  _fucking dream_  had anything to do with the day’s mantra, Jean kept his mouth shut about it.)

Jean made a vague grunting noise in the back of his throat and shut his eyes once more, but it was hard to fake sleep for long when the barracks were abuzz the way they were. Amidst the chatter, every boy in the cabin talked excitedly about their plans for the future, whether or not they thought they’d made the top ten, who they were betting on taking the top spot—a unanimous vote of Mikasa Ackerman, naturally. Armin said he was excited to speak to the commanders of all the different branches. Connie gushed about impressing his family by telling them he met  _the_  Nile Dawk. Reiner, remarkably not hung over, wondered aloud if the Survey Corps commander was as good-looking as everyone claimed he was. Eren sat suspiciously quiet, and Jean didn’t think much of it—in fact, he almost praised the heavens for it.

When Jean finally decided to accept that he was awake and not falling back asleep any time soon, the sun was just high enough in the sky so that it didn’t blind him when he slowly opened his eyes. Unlike everyone else in the room who was in various states of dressed in their uniforms and gear straps, Marco was still in the thin pants and shirt that he was in the night before, his hair still rumpled and stuck to his forehead from sleep. The only indication that he’d been awake was the book resting in his lap.

Jean purposely made a sleepy noise at the back of his throat and watched as Marco’s dark eyes flicked up from his reading.

“Oh,” said Marco. He blew a soft little breath that was half gasp and half sigh. “Good morning.”

“G’morning,” Jean murmured in reply. “Everyone’s gettin’ dressed but you.”

Marco shrugged. With one hand, he dog-eared his page and set the book down at his side, over the sheets. “You fell back asleep all cute and cozy,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

On one hand, being awoken from the possibility of another bad dream would have been nice, but on the other hand, Marco Bodt was staring at him with those big, honest eyes and calling him cute and all Jean could do was blush furiously and try to ignore the compliment for the sake of his dignity.

He buried his flushed face into his pillow and chuckled. “I was faking it. I slept like shit.”

“I’m sorry. You nervous?”

“About the results?”  _I wasn’t this nervous until you had to mention joining the fucking Survey Corps_. “Nah.”

“Don’t be,” Marco said. “I bet you we both made it.”

If the smile on his face looked completely forced, Jean didn’t mention it.


	4. we chose the king

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO this is one of my favorite chapters i've written and i'm excited to post it :>
> 
> (also i am in the process of changing chapter summaries because choosing the right lyrics from my inspo playlist was getting tedious every other week, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, etc)

The words _“sixth place: Jean Kirschstein”_ stuck with him for a long time.

There was a feast after the graduation ceremony, or whatever constituted as a feast compared to the strict rationing the camp had been adhering to for three years. The graduates crowded outside of the dining hall, chattering loudly and excitedly. Even the ones who ranked at the bottom of the pack, the lowest of the low, were making plans to join up with the Garrison after the next day’s assignment.

There was a sense of contentedness that fell over the entire group, collective relief that they were finished with training and moving onto the next phase of their lives, and yet Jean couldn’t even find it in himself to crack a forced smile.

He made the top ten. The one thing he’d been aiming for since he’d signed up for the stupid training camp in the first place. He was going to join the Military Police. His mother was going to live in the Interior like she’d always deserved to. He was safe. He made it.

And he should have been happy, but he wasn’t.

When he’d fallen asleep in the infirmary that night after busting his head open, Jean told himself that he should try to bury the hatchet with Eren, and he’d made an honest effort. They still weren’t exactly _friends_ , per se, but it was civil. They got along better than they used to. Bitter competition turned to friendly rivalry, Eren taught him new hand-to-hand techniques that he’d picked up from Annie and Reiner and then promptly kicked Jean’s ass with them, Jean teamed up with him during forest days, and they kicked ass _together_.

They weren’t best buds or anything, but they didn’t dislike each other any longer, and it was fine with Jean until he heard the fateful words out of Commander Shadis’ mouth during graduation: _“Number five: Eren Jaeger.”_

Across the crowd, Eren’s face held a rare grin. Reiner clapped him on the back with a large hand, Bertholdt gave a shy thumbs up, and Jean’s fists clenched at his sides. It was petty and he knew it all too well, but the bigger part of him didn’t care. He wanted his fist to collide with that smug, satisfied expression on his face. He wanted to scream at him— _you don’t even care, you don’t give a shit about the status as long as you can hold your own in the Survey Corps, so why are you higher than I am, what do you have that I don’t?_ —shout it right in his face, knock some sense into him.

The doors to the dining hall creaked open slowly, followed by a shout of congratulations from the kitchen staff, and Eren disappeared from his line of vision in a flurry of hungry graduates, and so he bit his tongue. Telling Jaeger off could wait until they weren’t in such a big crowd of people. He moved with the pack until he got one foot in the doorframe and a tight hand gripped onto his shoulder, squeezing until he turned around.

For all that Mikasa Ackerman was beautiful, she was ten times as terrifying standing chest-to-chest with Jean, eyes narrowed so that the deep grey of them turned black in the shadow and a fist clenched so firmly around his bicep that he was sure it would bruise. Armin kept close to her side, and his frown was soft in comparison.

“You are _not_ going to let him feel bad for succeeding,” Mikasa gritted between her teeth. Her expression cut like razor-sharp steel; Jean felt himself withering beneath it.

“I’m not—” he started.

“You’re _not_ ,” she said before he could get another thought out. “So you’re in the Military Police, congratulations. Not all of us want that.”

Jean glared at her. “Isn’t that the point here? Shouldn’t the top ten be the top ten people who are smart enough not to throw their lives away?”

“You haven’t changed at all in three years, have you?”

The last voice was quiet, barely above a whisper, and even with him so close to her side, Mikasa had to look down to make sure it was Armin she’d heard. Her grip on Jean’s shirt loosened, and her eyes softened just enough to be noticeable as she listened to him.

“I’m sorry, Jean,” Armin murmured self-consciously. “I don’t mean anything rude by it, really, but I can’t help but think that if we’ve been taught anything since we got here, it’s that nothing good will happen unless we put our necks on the line, isn’t it? I might not have room to talk, since I didn’t place—”

“Armin.” Mikasa let go of Jean’s arm to place a soft hand on Armin’s shoulder. Her glare turned to half of a reassuring smile for just long enough to hold his gaze.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I just mean that Mikasa’s right. We’re going to choose the path that benefits us the most individually. For us, that’s putting our lives in danger for the good of humanity; for you, it’s protecting the king inside the inner wall. Shouldn’t we respect that?”

The lantern made Armin’s eyes flicker; either that, or he was beginning to tear up, Jean couldn’t tell. His own shoulders dropped, and he breathed a long sigh until his spiking heart rate fell back to a normal speed.

“So you’re joining them then,” he said, defeated, turning to Mikasa.

“I’m joining whichever branch is necessary to protect what’s left of my family,” Mikasa replied. Her hand tensed on Armin’s shoulder again, and he reached up to cover it with his own, slipping his delicate fingers between hers.

Jean thought about his mother, how he only wanted to protect her. He thought about Connie and Sasha, who had grudgingly become the annoying siblings he never had. He thought about Marco and their promise to join the Military Police together and live in safety forever.

“That’s what I’m doing, too,” he said finally. “But in the Military Police.”

Mikasa nodded. Her eyes stayed narrow and dark. “And I don’t see the point in wasting your talent, but that’s what benefits you, so I respect it,” she said. “We all earned our spots, Eren included. Even if we’re not going the same way. Now _you_ need to respect that. Armin’s right.”

She turned and walked inside without another word, leaving Jean and Armin standing alone in her wake. The silence over them was heavy, only permeated by the crickets that had begun to chirp in the distance and the hum of conversation from inside the hall. Jean wrung his hands together, waiting for Armin to chew him out in Mikasa’s stead, but it never came—in fact, he found Armin looking right at him with an expression that was just a turn shy of a smile.

“If you’re gonna yell at me,” Jean said, casting his eyes in Armin’s direction, “just get it over with.”

Armin blinked once, confused, and then once more in recognition. He smiled in earnest, and the curve of his nose crinkled just a bit. “I’m not going to yell at you,” he said.

“Then what are you still here for?”

Armin shrugged, and then he nudged Jean’s elbow with his own. “Congratulations,” he said.

“Oh, uh.” Jean rubbed at his elbow absently. “Thanks, I guess. You placed eighteenth, didn’t you? What are you doing then?”

“What I was always going to do,” said Armin, and like Mikasa before him, he turned and breezed past. He called over his shoulder, “Aren’t you eating, Jean?”

Jean followed in a daze, through the line of kids filling their bowls and plates with vegetable soup and bread and meager portions of boiled chicken that had become a luxury since Wall Maria, and over to the table that Connie and Sasha had staked claim on. He ate in a tense quiet while they talked loudly about the Military Police and never having to worry about stability again, only roused from it when Connie kicked his ankles beneath the table.

“Dude, I swear to shit if you keep moping, I’m going to throw my goddamned drink in your face.”

Jean glared at Connie across the table. Connie grinned in return and winked over the rim of his mug of tea.

“Honestly,” Sasha chimed in, “you ranked higher than _both_ of us, shouldn’t we be the ones with the right to sulk? Oh Connie, boo- _hoo_ , we got eight and ninth and we’re going to the Military Police anyway!”

Connie snickered and fell into her shoulder. “Woe is us, Sasha! How will we ever survive? The number eight will follow me for the rest of my life!” he cried dramatically, looping an arm around her neck and squishing their cheeks together.

“Thanks, assholes, I appreciate it,” Jean groused.

“Your conjoined twin has disappeared, _someone’s_ gotta keep you from imploding on yourself,” said Sasha.

Connie lifted his eyebrows, scanning the crowded hall with wide eyes. “Speaking of, where _is_ Marco? Cute little motherfucker outranked me by one, I gotta kick him right in the ass freckles.”

Relief came, at least in part, in those words. Marco was top ten, right next to Jean at the ceremony. He’d clumsily reached for Marco’s hand the second he got called up to join him, and he’d never felt more relief than when Marco’s fingers had threaded perfectly between his and squeezed once, twice, and a third time, a confirmation that it was them until the end. (He thought again about Mikasa’s words, about protecting his family, and his resolve only grew stronger.)

Sasha cocked her head to the side. “He and Mina went on the congratulations route a few minutes ago. They’re standing over there—” She pointed at the front wall. “—with Eren, Mikasa, Armin, and a bunch of the guys joining the Garrison.”

Connie and Jean whipped their heads to the front of the dining hall in perfect sync. Everyone was watching Eren, enthralled with what appeared to be another one of his Survey Corps rants. It _was_ due time for one, Jean supposed. He’d been suspiciously mum about the subject for a long while, at least while Armin was around, almost like he was protecting him, like he knew his path in life wasn’t the safest for both of them.

Had he not been pissed at Eren for outranking him, he would have realized it then and there. That Eren wasn’t suicidal, that his dedication to the Survey Corps wasn’t unfounded. That he only wanted to exterminate the titans to protect the people he loved. That realizing this sooner could save all of their lives soon enough—

But he was, and he continued on gritting his teeth at Eren and his stupid idealism and the fact that it seemed to be _working_. Thomas was nodding along with bright eyes, and Mina stood at Marco’s side, clutching his arm in a way that should have made Jean happy for them—if she was the one, and if he was in his right mind.

“Fuck it,” Jean said, abandoning the last crust of bread on his plate as he stood abruptly from the bench. “I’m out of here.”

He didn’t listen to Connie and Sasha’s shouts for him to come back as he pushed through the back door and stepped into the chilly open air.

Outside of the hall was nearly silent—all of the trainees were inside eating ,and the instructors had left straight from the graduation ceremony to prep the carts for the next morning, so the only sounds that filled Jean’s ears were the occasional chirping of crickets or the rustle of distant tree branches in the breeze. He slumped against the wall until his ass met the dirt below and his bony knees knocked painfully into his chest, and only then, when his face was hidden in the safety of his knees, did he let out a shaky breath that sprung tears to his eyes.

Selfish. Stupid. Whiny fucking punk-ass piece of shit.

He knew better than anyone that he was acting like the spoiled, rich Trost brat everyone expected him to be, but he couldn’t help it. Let them keep thinking it.

Even if Mikasa had a point earlier, what did one stupid assessment test show? Hadn’t he been consistently in the top five in nearly every exercise for three years? Hadn’t Commander Shadis commended him as one of the most skilled trainees time and time again? What did _Eren Jaeger_ have that he didn’t? More passion? More drive? A too-lenient willingness to get himself killed?

“I’ll show them,” Jean told himself gruffly. He gripped handfuls of the dark material covering his knees, gnawing his lower lip to quell the wetness that threatened to spill down his face. “I’ll fucking show them.”

There were footsteps on the ground ahead of him, but he ignored them and kept his head bowed. No one had to see him like this. Let them think he was some underling regretting their decision to join the military at all. Let them—

“Jean,” Marco said firmly. “Get up.”

Jean sniffled. No tears had fallen, that was a plus, and in the darkness, nobody could see how red his eyes were. Cautiously, he lifted his face and saw Marco staring down at him, a hand on either hip. His eyebrows were set in a harsh expression, and his jaw was clenched tight.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, and Jean tried to ignore the frustration that colored his tone. “I saw you leave and I was scared you were hurt.”

“M’fine,” Jean mumbled. “Fresh air.” He hoisted himself up with the help of the wall, but he still avoided Marco’s eyes, couldn’t stand to see the disappointment there after they had been staring at him so fondly that morning.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I just don’t fucking get it,” Jean said after a long pause to deliberate. “He doesn’t even need it.”

“He doesn’t,” Marco agreed. “But he earned it, Jean. We all did. You don’t honestly think the MP will look down on you for being _sixth_ , heaven forbid, instead of fifth, do you?”

“It’s not sixth that gets me! It’s _‘sixth: Jean, fifth: Eren.’_ It makes me feel fucking worthless, okay? I got beat by a kid who doesn’t even want it.”

“Jean, listen to yourself!”

Marco’s shoulders were shaking. Jean had never heard him yell like that. Marco was normally so soft and conscientious with his words; now, there were angry tears in his eyes and his voice came broken and choked.

He didn’t sound like himself. It made Jean’s jaw slam shut.

“Do you think _I’m_ any less of a person because _I_ got beat by Eren? Am _I_ worthless? Are Connie, or Sasha, or Christa worthless because they placed behind him too? What about the people who didn’t place at all, huh?”

“That’s different!” Jean roared back. “I _know_ you held back, you always do! That’s why you brought up Ymir last night, isn’t it? Because you did what she did. Maybe not as drastic, but I know you, Marco. That’s why you’re always hanging at the back of the pack during training, because you can’t help but help. It’s your fucking nature. I know you can’t help but limit yourself to benefit other people, you’re the fucking one who volunteered to help me recoup when I fucked up my ankle.”

His hands were shaking. He should have just shut his mouth then and there, but frustration filled his bones, ripped the words from his throat even as he watched Marco’s Adam’s apple bob with an uncomfortable swallow.

“Seventh is amazing for you, because it means you’re better than _hundreds_ of kids even when you’re not at your best.”

Marco leaned heavily against the wall, and, right before Jean’s eyes, he broke. Tears fell from both eyes, down the sides of his neck. They left wet spots around the collar of his shirt, and he wiped at them hastily without so much as a glance in Jean’s direction.

It felt like a punch to the gut.

“I thought you’d be happy,” Marco said, choked words spat at his feet. “We’re all going to be together. _Exactly_ what we talked about happening is going to happen, and you’re pissed about it. How do you think that makes the rest of us feel?”

“Marco,” Jean whispered. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean—”

Jean’s idle hands suddenly felt useless. He had no idea what to do, all he knew was that he _would_ do anything to take away the sound of Marco crying. The strangled, drowning sound of his sobs rang in his ears, made his own eyes prick uncomfortably hot and his chest constrict so tightly that it felt like he was on the verge of suffocation.

And so he stepped forward so his chest pressed flush against Marco’s, and he wrapped his arms tightly around his waist, holding on tight.

It both took a weight off and made his chest feel infinitely heavier when Marco buried his face into his shoulder and breathed in deep. Marco’s fingers fisted tight into the thick wool of his vest, tugged it right up to his face, and he let out a broken whine that made the first tear dribble down the curve of Jean’s cheekbone.

“I’m sorry,” said Jean. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m so happy that you made it, okay? I’ve never been so fucking happy about something. I’m just… I’m selfish. You know that.”

“I do,” Marco hiccupped. “We both are, remember? You’re talented, Jean, you’re so talented. You’re just as amazing as Eren is, but you just have to be patient. One day, someone will see how great you are, but until then, we’ll be amazing together in the MP, okay? Promise me.”

“I promise,” Jean said, and they stood there for what felt like hours, leaning against the wall of the dining hall and holding onto each other like their lives depended on it. He inhaled the citrusy Jinae smell that still clung to Marco’s skin, traced patterns up and down his spine, until both of them could breathe right again, and longer still.

Marco’s grip on Jean’s waist stayed steady and firm, and Jean loved him so suddenly and so violently that it burned in his chest and made his head feel like it was going to burst.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t know how long it had been—minutes, hell it could have hours and he wouldn’t know the difference—when Marco’s head lifted from the crook of Jean’s neck, the soft upturned point of his nose brushing the top of his ear. It sent involuntary shivers down Jean’s spine, and he dug his hands into tight fists of warm turquoise in Marco’s shirt.

“Can I show you something?” Marco whispered, feather light.

Jean didn’t need a second to deliberate; at that point, Marco was the only one he trusted enough to follow, even into the dark, cruel world beyond the walls, if that was what he wanted.

Marco’s long, nimble legs led them across the camp, past the blackened remains of scrap wood from last night’s bonfire, past cabins and the outdoor shower stalls that separated the girls’ barracks from the boys’. He nodded to the boys’ cabin, pointed a finger past the front deck that wrapped around the right side of the building.

There was a ladder built into the cabin wall, just as worn and weathered as the rest of the wood that made the rest of the place up, probably ever only used to repair the rickety ceiling that was prone to leaking in the rainy seasons. Even in the smoky light of the torch around the corner of the building, there were visibly thick splinters and cracks in the rungs, but still Marco gripped the first one above his shoulder in a calloused hand, gesturing with the other for Jean to follow him up.

Jean, of course, responded with a furrowed brow and a firm shake of the head.

“Don’t wanna fall to my death.”

“Trust me?” was all Marco had to say to change his mind.

His right boot slipped on the last rung, but Marco’s hand was immediately there to steady him, tug him onto the roof and into safety, sitting atop the wooden panels.

“See?” he smiled. “You lived. Funny how that works out.”

“ _Har har_ ,” Jean snipped back harmlessly, dusting off his shirt and pants with long sweeps of his hands. “Why are we up here?”

“Wait for it.”

“For what, exactly?”

Marco’s head was tilted toward the unending sky above, stars reflecting in the dark of his eyes mirroring the sea of them across his face.

“A shooting star,” he answered without looking away.

“A _what_?”

“A shooting star,” Marco repeated. “You remember my book from this morning when you woke up?”

Jean certainly remembered waking up from that horrible dream, vaguely remembered Marco putting aside a book to greet him.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, it’s Armin’s, actually, but it’s all about stars and constellations—it’s really kind of cool.” Marco’s lips curled into a smile, and Jean stared intently at the dimples that sunk into his cheeks. “It said that back before the titans and the walls, people believed that the gods would look down sometimes, and when they did, stars would slip through the gap between them and us. If you saw one shooting across the sky and wished on it, the gods would be looking down at you already, so it was more likely to come true.”

Eventually, Jean angled his head up at the sky as well, and there were the stars, hanging right over where they sat. He tried to imagine Maria, Rose, and Sina up there in the sky watching them. Mostly he just hoped they weren’t laughing at the two kids alone on the roof with tear-stained cheeks and dirty clothes.

“So that was what we’re up here for?” he asked finally. “Looking for a ‘shooting star’ or whatever?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I guess so.” Marco chuckled, soft and airy. “I honestly think we both just needed to clear our heads for a second. Up here, there’s no one to bother us, you know?”

“Guess so,” Jean echoed. He squinted up at the sky, tried to map out patterns in the dark blue, but he couldn’t seem to find anything. “What were you trying to wish for?”

“The book also said it’s considered bad luck to tell someone,” Marco chided. “But… a lot of things, really. We’re in the Military Police, but we’ve still got tomorrow’s assignment to survive.”

“Morbid,” Jean chuckled darkly.

“Shut up.”

“Buzzkill.”

“Jerk.”

The stillness of the night settled over them again, the buzz of graduates leaving the dining hall too far away to register. Jean silently pressed against Marco’s shoulder again—just like the night before, only sober—and Marco tore his eyes away from the sky for long enough to take the hint.

In one careful movement, he curled his arm around Jean’s shoulders and guided his head to rest between the warm plane of his broad shoulder and the line of his jaw so the very edge of it rested atop Jean’s messy mop of ashen hair.

“I don’t know what I’d wish for if we saw one,” Jean murmured.

“Hm?”

“Like, we made it already, y’know? What else ‘m I gonna wish for, a world without titans? Fat chance of that happening in this lifetime.”

“Maybe the next.”

Jean snorted indelicately, his head bobbing on top of Marco’s shoulder. “Or the next. Imagine that shit. An infinite loop of Jeans trying to get their shit together and get the fuck away from the titans.”

“And an infinite loop of Marcos trying to keep the Jeans from running into trees,” Marco amended. Jean would have hit him if he had the energy to, if he wasn’t so comfortable leaning into his side. “And infinite Mikasas and Christas and Armins and Erens—”

“ _Eurgh_ , don’t with that one,” Jean groaned. He reasoned that he was allowed a moment more of lounging in his pettiness. “And infinite Minas, yeah?”

Marco looked down at him with raised eyebrows. “Yeah, and Minas too, of course. I figured that was implied?”

“Making sure,” Jean murmured. “She’s the one, isn’t she?”

“The one what?”

“The one you _like_ , dumbass. You looked close with her at dinner, I kind of just assumed—”

“That I was hanging out with my cousin?”

That would explain the whole looking alike thing then.

“ _Wow_ ,” Jean breathed. “ _I’m_ the dumbass. To be fair, you never told me about her in the three years I’ve known you. What a friend.”

His heart thudded unexpectedly in his chest, and he tried as hard as he could to ignore it, will it away, as best as he could when he knew that nothing would work.

“You’re the one said it,” Marco laughed, wiggling his shoulder so Jean’s head bobbed uncontrollably—until Jean threatened to bite it at least, which helped quell the kick drum in his chest. “We were never really close, to be honest. Our families lived on opposite ends of the wall, but she, uh, was the kick in the pants that finally convinced me to visit home the first summer here.”

“I thought that was me?” Jean pouted. “I distinctly remember you saying our little talk in the hospital wing made you realize you needed to go home, Bodt.”

“May have been milking your ego at the time.” Marco dodged the fist that went flying at his head. “Hey! Our friendship was new! A newborn deer in need of encouragement to stretch its little, wobbly legs. It was a necessary measure.”

A metaphor that ridiculous shouldn’t have been that cute—and yet it was, and Jean had to turn his head so Marco couldn’t see the stupid smile that stretched over his face.

“Wow, friendship over, dickhead,” he grumbled dramatically into Marco’s arm.

“Did I tell you Téa still pronounces your name ‘Gene’?”

“Friendship with a four-year-old I’ve never met also over.”

“You’ll meet her one day.”

Jean was thankful for the darkness that hid his blush, and he breathed a lungful of calm night air. “So what else was in that book, huh?”

Marco smiled like he’d been waiting for Jean to ask him more about it. “Oh man, I was getting into it for a while before you got up. There’s a whole chapter dedicated to constellations that represent birthdays and personality traits and—And you’re not listening to a word I’m saying, are you?”

His voice was light and mocking, and he gave a little squeeze with the arm wrapped around Jean’s shoulders.

  
“Well, I sure _hear_ you,” Jean said, smirking weakly. He watched Marco’s pretty lips crack a smile that mirrored his own, only wider, more genuine, and he wanted to kiss them.

Wanted to kiss them, or at least wanted them to _want_ to kiss his.

“You’re such an ass,” Marco said. “Look, I’ll show you. See that star? And how it’s across from that one, and that one kind of makes a weird, broken kind of cane shape?”

He pointed out each star with his outstretched hand, waited patiently for Jean to find each one, and when he had finally mapped them out, he drew the shape in the air with his index finger.

“ _That’s_ Aries,” he said. “That’s your constellation.”

Jean traced the pattern Marco’s finger drew with his eyes. Aries _was_ a weird little broken cane, like someone started drawing a pattern and then quit. Typical.

“Yeah?” he asked. “What’s it say about my personality?”

“You’re adventurous,” said Marco, pulling his knees against his body. Jean kept close to his side, so Marco’s arm still hung over his shoulder. “And confident. Quick-witted, courageous, energetic…”

Jean puffed his chest out, all exaggerated pride. “Hey, I think I like this Aries thing.”

“…Also selfish and impatient and temperamental. And you share it with Eren.”

“Wow, fuck that. I hate this shit.”

Marco shrugged over him. “You two are more alike than you’ll ever admit.”

“Exactly,” Jean said. “I’ll never admit it.”

“You just kind of admitted it.”

“ _Shhh_.”

Embarrassed, he buried his face in the crook of Marco’s neck. It was warm there, not that the air outside was cold or anything, but a different kind of warm. He was reluctant to say it aloud for fear of sounding like a complete sap, but it was almost a homey warm. Like curling into bed at the end of the day, that kind of comfortable, soothing feeling when your head hit the pillow and your muscles relaxed and sleep slowly came over your body and released every little stress, at least for a moment. Like that, except his spine tingled with nervousness the closer his lips got to the skin bared by the collar of Marco’s sweater slipping down his shoulder.

He felt the smile Marco broke into, jawline pressed against the top of his head, and he cast his eyes back up at the sky—at least until he heard something _clunk_ indelicately against the side of the cabin.

“Marco, did you—”

“Yeah, I heard it.”

There was a quiet _thunk_ as the person stepped onto the ladder, followed by a few more until a blond head popped up, followed by one of shiny black, then one wild brown.

“I _told you_ there were people up here,” Mikasa hissed at Eren. He rewarded her with a tongue poked childishly between his lips, thick eyebrows furrowed, and hands petulantly placed on his hips.

“Sorry,” Armin apologized for the both of them. He had a book tucked under one arm, and Jean recognized the one Marco had been reading that morning. “I didn’t realize you were up here. I was going to show Eren and Mikasa some constellations before we get into the city tomorrow.”

He turned to Eren, gesturing back down the ladder, but Marco shook his head insistently.

“Go for it!” he said. “We were just looking at them too.”

Jean shrugged as best as he could in his position. “S’whatever,” he half-agreed, reluctant to give up his alone time with Marco, but Eren’s voice stopped him.

“Hey.”

Jean opened his eyes and felt Marco’s shoulder tense up beneath his cheek. A precaution, a warning. _Don’t start a fight, I know you, please don’t do it tonight._

But Eren said, “Congratulations on the top ten,” and he sounded sincere. “You guys did great,” and he let a honest smile curl his lips.

And when Jean returned the congratulations a moment after Eren flopped indelicately between Armin and Mikasa, he found that he actually sort of meant it.

“Look,” Armin said softly once the three of them had settled down into their amorphous cuddle pile. He shifted, Eren’s head rested on his lap jostling with the movement. Mikasa carded her fingers through Eren’s messy hair, and Armin’s sleeve drooped down his thin arm as he pointed to the sky above. “There was a shooting star, off to the right.”

The star crossed the sky not ten seconds later, and Jean closed his eyes with a wish that he and Marco—and everyone else—would live a world without titans together, someday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are always appreciated!


	5. the end of the world

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaand with this chapter begins the battle of trost, so the canon-typical violence tag will come into play soon, starting next chapter and spanning pretty much the rest of part 1!
> 
> i should be posting the rest of my jeanmarco week fics within the next couple of days (late lmao) but i really wanted to get this out and edited on time. enjoy!

“I can’t believe you _grew up_ here, Jean.”

Their boots clipped and clopped against the cobblestone roads that line Jean’s childhood neighborhood like hooves, not unlike those of the Survey Corps’ fleet of horses that had trotted through the streets, army in tow, not an hour ago.

He’d bit his tongue as they’d headed out for the day’s expedition, harder still when Eren had enthusiastically pushed past him to point out each and every notable soldier to an enthusiastic Armin and an impassive Mikasa, both of whom looked like they’d heard it all a million times before. When the commander’s too-familiar blue eyes had fallen on him, only briefly but long enough for him to notice, Jean’s stomach had turned unpleasantly, and he’d ducked out to catch some fresh air out of the stifling, oppressive closeness of the crowd lining the street. Somewhere in the mess, Marco had found him, Sasha and Connie not far behind, and now they’d wandered far enough that with every step, they edged closer and closer to the part of Trost that Jean still knew by heart.

“It isn’t like this is the first time you’ve been to Trost. We’ve had assignments here before,” he murmured idly to Marco, whose eyes had gone impossibly more enormous than their usual baby deer size. They kept flitting from building to building, storefront to storefront, like he thought that the wider he opened them, the more he’d be able to take in. Three steps behind him, Connie and Sasha were doing the same with added squawking and cooing at everything they set their eyes on.

“We’re always over by the Garrison HQ clear across the district, though,” Marco said as they passed the town square. “This is the first time we’ve been to your neighborhood.”

Sasha broke from her wide-eyed stupor to snip, “We can’t all be fancy city folk like you who are used to this!”

Jean tilted his head behind him to stick his tongue out at her, and she blew a raspberry in return, like truly mature future members of the Military Police.

It was strange how acquainted he still was with the path leading up to his old home. He had only visited a few times since the beginning of training—once each winter for St. Sina’s Day, once during the hottest month of each summer when the heat got too oppressive to work out in—and yet it was almost as if he’d never left. Everything looked more or less the same: the buildings still stood tall, merchants’ carts still lined the streets, offering their wares. Children were still playing, Wallists were still preaching. The Wagners’ grocery sat untouched on the corner between the bakery and the blacksmith, adorned with little paintings of fruits and dairy on wooden signs nailed to the front windowsills. The water pump at the end of the main street was, as always, surrounded by people waiting for cold water and a reprieve from the heat.

He knew if they followed the road to the corner across from the tailor’s shop, they’d be on his front doorstep, and his throat dried up.

“My, uh,” Jean started. He stopped in the middle of the road—too quickly, apparently, because Connie’s shaved head collided between his shoulder blades with an affronted shout. “My mom should be home.”

Marco made a small noise. “Oh yeah?”

“I mean, if you, um… if you guys wanted to meet her.”

Marco’s eyebrows lifted and he looked positively ecstatic, his grin stretching wider and wider with every passing second. “Really?” he asked, failing miserably at keeping the enthusiasm out of his voice. He wasn’t too good at the whole Stoic Soldier thing; with any luck, he, Sasha, and Connie would be the first ever Military Police members to ever smile on the job.

“Mom told me once to bring friends over, no big deal,” he said as if it was actually not a big deal. As if he wasn’t actually a cross between terrified and thrilled to see his mother for the first time since graduating and say, _“Hey Mom, I’m finally making good on the promise to get us to Wall Sina and introduce you to the losers I call friends.”_

Sasha stared at him in silent contemplation for a long while, and Connie had to clamp his teeth down on his lower lip to keep from laughing.

“Oh, Jean!” she finally said, rising to her feet. “You really _do_ like us!”

“Our little mama’s boy’s all grown up!” Connie agreed, and he hoisted his undersized self from the ground to jump onto Jean’s back, nearly knocking both him and Marco over with the sheer force of the leap.

“Keep laughing, Mr. My Mom Will Think I’m Cool If I Meet Nile Dawk,” Jean groused, shaking him off of his shoulders. Connie made an obscene gesture from the ground that his mom certainly _wouldn’t_ think were cool as he scrambled back to his feet, and Jean returned it before he continued into the street. “Come on, my house was this way.”

“We’re not going to get in trouble for not working, are we?” Marco asked, blinking wildly as they started back down the road. “We’re supposed to be on street guard duty.”

“Ever the honor student, Marco,” Jean snorted. “The officer in charge of us left the second the Survey Corps were gone to go play poker and drink whiskey by the wall. I’m pretty sure we’re fine.”

It was plain for anyone to see that Marco was using every ounce of his self-control not to hug the living daylights out of Jean in the middle of the crowded square. It was probably even clearer that Jean wanted to hug him right back, maybe something more, something involving Marco’s full, smiling lips—but not with prying eyes or any leftover grumpy Garrison guards wandering around.

Later. He would fucking hug the bastard all he wanted later, when they were on their way to Military Police HQ.

By the time they reached the front door, he could hear his mother’s gentle hum through the slats in the window behind the porch chair, still facing the square like he always used to position it when he sat down to draw. Her soothing voice filled his ears, the song a familiar one that she used to sing to him as a child when he was upset. It soothed his aching heart, if only for a moment.

Jean paused before knocking and stared at the doorframe for a long while. He traced the notches in the wood with his eyes, each little mark labeled with a different age. _Jean, Age 2_ met up with the bottom of his knees, three a bit higher up. The last mark, labeled _Jean, Age 12, Enlistment_ lingered just below his chin—a reminder that it _had_ been a long time since he called Trost home.

He raised one hand and knocked in two hard raps of his shaking knuckles, and he waited. The door swung open after a few seconds, and the look on Ms. Kirschstein’s face could only be described as abject horror.

“Officers, is everything okay?” she asked as she looked at Connie, then Sasha, then Marco.

Her voice was unsteady, petrified—it sounded too much like the morning Jean left for training, when she’d told him it was okay to be scared. He could still perfectly see the image of her crying as the cart pulled away, and he still remembered his dream from two nights ago, being handed a blood-spattered cloak and a silent look of mourning.

How many times in three years had she been afraid of this? How many times had she seen officers headed her way and feared for the life of her only child?

Jean made a vow then: he would never let her know that kind of pain again. Not as long as he had anything to do with it.

“Is there something wrong with—” Her eyes finally fell on Jean, and the terror turned quickly into elation. _“Jean-bo!”_

His mother grinning at him like she had just seen the sun for the first time after ten years of darkness, _that_ was what he wanted to see.

“You scared me nearly to death, Jean-bo! I thought you were on an assignment today!” she cried, small body barreling into his with a crushing hug. “You’re so tall I didn’t recognize you at first! What are you doing here? How are you? How was graduation? Did you—?”

She stopped herself with a quiet sob of relief into his shoulder, and Jean squeezed her tight.

“I did it, Mom,” he whispered into her hair. She smelled like sweet, floral perfume, and the wisps of her ponytail that tickled the side of his face were greyer than he remembered them being. “I made it.”

Saying it to her made his insecurities about placing below Eren melt away into nothingness again. For once, it felt like victory. It felt like freedom. But most of all, it felt like he was _finally_ making good on the promises he’d made so long ago, that they would live safe and happy for the rest of their lives.

“ _Baby_ ,” she cried against the thick material of his jacket. Her words came out in choked little sobs. “I love you. I’m so _proud_ of you.”

“Sixth place,” he said, and for the first time, it wasn’t spat out of his mouth with disdain or spite. For the first time, he truly felt like sixth place was something to be celebrated. “We make our choices tonight. I’m joining the Military Police. We made it.”

“My baby,” she said, and a litany of _I love you_ and _I’ve never been so proud_ and _I can’t wait to tell your aunts and make them seethe with jealousy_ left her mouth in a constant stream before she lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her arm.

It was then, it seemed, that she realized they weren’t alone. Connie and Sasha were looking on with badly-concealed goo-goo eyes—he was going to be hearing about this later, surely. Marco had stepped to the side, just a bit, and Jean could see his eyes looked a little more liquid than usual.

Jean probably just lost all cool points forever. Somehow, he didn’t care.

“You finally brought friends!” his mother said, facing them. She wiped her eyes again and grinned. “I would have bought more than eggs and bread for breakfast had I known!”

“Don’t worry about it, Ms. Kirschstein,” Marco offered with a sweet smile. Jean made a mental note to tease him later about trying to impress her, the cute little shit.

“Food’s food!” Sasha agreed.

“Yeah, ain’t no big deal to us!” Connie said, bounding inside before the rest of them even turn to the door. “Whoa, Jean, you never told us how _nice_ your house is. You could fit _ten_ of mine in here. Cool place, Mama K!”

“Oh my god,” Jean whispered, leaning into his mom’s side. “Ignore him. Pretend I never brought them over. Whose friends are these? Certainly not mine.”

“Oh hush yourself, they’re charming,” his mother chuckled. She elbowed him in the side and ushered Sasha and Marco in, trailing not far behind. “Thank you, darling!” she called after them. “Now, introduce me to your friends, Jean-bo.”

Jean introduced Connie first, if only because he had planted himself indelicately on top of the kitchen table and was causing a scene rattling the legs against the wooden floor, then Sasha, and he hesitated before turning to the one person he was most nervous about presenting to her.

“And, um,” he began, “this is Marco.”

His mother turned to him the same way she had to Connie and Sasha, the same pleasant smile on her face, but when the name sunk in, her eyes shone just a bit wetter than before.

“Marco?” she asked quietly.

He fidgeted under her gaze for a long time, alternating between looking at her, looking at his boots, and scratching anxiously at the bridge of his nose, and Jean knew the tic all too well at this point. He was nervous, and Jean tried to offer relief in the form of a gentle touch to his elbow.

“It’s, um, really nice to meet you, Ms. Kirschstein,” Marco offered unsteadily.

Jean’s mother’s eyes were brimmed with tears, rings of red around the green-gold of her irises. “ _You’re_ Marco,” she breathed. “You’re the one who—”

Before she finished her sentence, before Marco could even finish lifting his hand to scratch his nose again, she swooped beneath his elbow and threw her arms tightly around his body. Her head barely reached his shoulder, and she had to push onto the tips of her toes to get a good grip on him, and of every sight Jean had ever seen—including the view from the tops of the trees at the edge of the training camp and the babbling brook that he and Marco found buried deep in the mountains during an excursion exercise in their second year—his tiny mother hugging the life out of his tall best friend was the single most incredible.

“You _saved_ him,” she said, muffled by his jacket covering her mouth. “When he got hurt and fell… you’re the one who caught him. I don’t… I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for saving my little boy.”

“Ms. Kirschstein,” Marco said back. His hands rubbed her back in soothing circles as she cried quietly into his chest. “You don’t owe me anything, I promise. You—you gave me my best friend in the world. That’s all I could ever ask for.”

His eyes met Jean’s over her head, and if Jean teared up a little, it was only because he was lost his immunity to the pollen in Trost. Really. He wasn’t crying at all, even when he discreetly swiped an arm over his eyes and sniffled so loudly that Sasha snickered in his direction.

But his mom’s lips twitched up, and she pulled slowly back from the hug to look Marco right in the face with an easy smile.

“You make him so happy,” she said simply, quietly—almost conspiratorially, which made Jean’s eyebrows knit together and his cheeks flush warm and uncomfortable—and she winked before she turns back to Connie and Sasha, now planted in chairs along the side of the dining table. “Who’s hungry?”

The two whooped and hollered at the prospect of food, even if they all ate breakfast at the Garrison quarters not two hours ago upon arrival in town, but Jean hung back, caught Marco by the sleeve.

“Don’t be weirded out,” Jean said. “She probably loves you more after five minutes of knowing you than she loves me after fifteen years of being my mother.”

The bronze of Marco’s skin went beet red underneath the smattering of freckles across his cheeks, and Jean was almost proud that he could make him blush like that. One for the books, even if the guy did spend most of his time smiling like a little kid.

“Oh please, Mama’s Boy,” Marco teased, giggling. He said it close enough that Jean could easily map out every single one of his freckles, including the ones dotting the very edges of his lips, but he refrained. “As if anyone couldn’t love you.”

Jean’s heart thumped painfully, but he brushed it off with a sarcastic noise of disapproval.

“You’d be surprised,” he snorted.

He tried not to look too hopelessly fond as his mom pointed vaguely at him with a knife and beckoned him to her side with a flick of the opposite wrist.

“Come here and toast this bread for me while I get the eggs going, Jean-bo,” she said calmly, and when Jean joined her at the counter and she offered him the sliced loaf of bread and a sly wink, he thought to himself that there was nothing that could possibly bring his day down.

 

* * *

He was wrong. Of course he was.

The five of them ate fried eggs and bread that was a little more scorched than toasted—Jean had spent more time watching his friends happily converse with his mother than he did keeping his eyes on the pan—between light conversation about their years in training and their future plans after joining the Military Police.

And it was good, it was. It was great, even.

He got to let loose for the first time in a long time, feel Marco lean into his side when he told a particularly terrible joke, and he got to listen to his mother match Sasha’s sharp wit and Connie’s happy humor with the idea in his head that it was probably far from the last time that it would happen.

He was happy, and even when the clock chimed ten o’clock and the four graduates were reminded that they’d ditched their posts and were supposed to be on duty, he watched Connie and Sasha leave for their positions on top of the wall before he hugged his mother goodbye with a smile on his face and a faux grimace when she kissed him on the cheek.

“I think I kind of love her,” Marco said decisively as they stepped off of the porch together, unaware that as he spoke, a seventeen-year-old boy had covertly leapt off of the edge of Wall Rose, teeth clamped tightly enough over his left thumb to tear the skin.

“I think she might adopt you,” Jean countered, and a discolored crack of green-red lightning cut through the thin morning clouds.

And then it happened.

Before either of them could even react, a high-pitched yell echoed through the streets, followed by another, and then another, until all that could be heard was a chorus of bloodcurdling screams from the citizens of Trost. The sound of it made Jean want to cover his ears, find the nearest pillow and bury his face in it and hope to wake up from another bad dream. It sounded like too many memories, too many nightmares of fallen trainees, of bloodied cloaks and downcast eyes full of sympathy.

A higher-ranking officer passed, frantic, and Jean said a big _fuck you_ to personal boundaries as he instinctively reached for Marco’s hand, threading sweat-slicked fingers through Marco’s trembling ones. Marco’s skin, usually so warm and dark, turned a ghostly pale around his face, pupils constricted and nearly disappeared in the deep brown of his eyes as he stared, dumbfounded, at the horizon.

“N-no,” he stuttered. His voice came hoarse, hardly a whisper over the earsplitting screams that surrounded them. “It can’t—it can’t be the…”

Over the very top of Wall Rose, behind a thick cloud of ash and rubble that had already begun to flood the outer streets, loomed an immense, skinless figure. Tendons stretched over blood red muscle, teeth bared in a soulless smile as if its lips had been ripped away, eyes sunken in, the muddy green shine of them barely visible in the shadow of deep black sockets.

The Colossal Titan leaned closer and closer to the wall, steam seeping from gaps between flesh and muscle with every heaving breath, and it seemed as if the entirety of Trost was frozen in horror as it keened back, enormous hands clenching the top of the wall tightly enough to crack the brick and mortar around its sinewy fingers.

The first kick was deafening, the second devastating. A fissure split open at the bottom of the wall, stone shattering like glass in its wake before it crumbled to the ground, sending soldiers and citizens alike fleeing for safe ground.

Except that was exactly the problem; there _was_ no safe ground anymore. Wall Rose had been breached, the very same way Wall Maria had been five years ago, and through the hole left by the Colossal Titan’s kick, the rest of the titans were already making their way inside to rampage Trost the same way they had Shiganshina.

The shout of a Garrison officer tore Jean’s horrified gaze from the wall. She stomped down the street, 3DMG triggers clasped in her hands, redundantly shouting, “Citizens, remain calm!” to unlistening ears.

“Remember evacuation protocol! This is not a drill!” she yelled. “Bring only what is absolutely necessary! Find your assigned evacuation gate and a soldier or trainee will escort you outside of the wall! I repeat, _remain calm_!”

Her voice betrayed her words, all uneven pitch and choked sobs that died in the back of her throat. When she stopped on the corner to catch her breath and sheathe her blades, hunched over with her hands balled into fists over her knees, Jean spotted tear tracks cutting through the spaces between the scars on her left cheek.

She caught his eye and her brows pulled together into a deathly serious glare that made Jean’s full stomach curl sickly.

“Cadets, what are your names and where are your emergency posts?” she asked sharply.

Marco slipped his hand from Jean’s with a barely-there frown and managed a strong salute, though his voice still wavered as he answered, “Marco Bodt, officer! My post is the north evacuation gate, as leader of Squad 19!”

The officer’s heavy-lidded and red-rimmed hazel stare turned to Jean then. “And you?”

Jean’s salute was feebler by comparison—looking into the woman’s bloodshot eyes only reminded him that his mother was still inside of the house, and he couldn’t focus enough on slamming his damned fist to his chest the proper way when his mind was assaulting him with concocted visions of a titan’s fist slamming into his childhood home.

“Jean Kirschstein,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation. “Leader of Squad 15, street evacuation duty, officer.”

She nodded. “I expect you two can gather your squads at your posts and make it to HQ on your own. This is an emergency situation, and we want as few casualties as possible, do you understand me?”

“Understood,” they echoed to her as she turned her back, directing foot traffic with her hands now instead of her blades.

“Everyone in this area, evacuate to the eastern gate!” she shouted. “I repeat, everyone east of the clock tower, evacuate to the eastern gate! Life boats out of the district will be boarding shortly!”

Marco was still trembling, and Jean watched him take a deep breath in before turning, presumably to his post at the back gate before the Armored Titan could reach it and break his way closer and closer to Wall Sina.

But…

 _Wall Sina_.

“Marco!” Jean cried, catching him by the wrist before he could walk any further. Marco’s eyes were wide and manic when he turned to him, but he still ushered Jean to keep talking and _fast_. “The boats at the northern gate evacuate to Sina, right?”

“I think so, Jean, but why are—”

“Take my mom with you.”

Marco blinked in shock: once, twice, and a third time before he stammered for words. “B-but the officer just said this area evacuates to—”

“The eastern gate, I know,” Jean finished for him. “But if she leaves through the east gate, she’ll be stuck at a refugee camp in some inner Rose town for who knows how long. If she manages to get to Sina, we have family in Stohess who will take her in until everything settles down and we can join her.”

Marco was quiet for a long moment, contemplating. Jean knew he was probably being a shitty, selfish brat, forcing Marco to make the choice between being a soldier and being a friend, but if there was anything he could do to save his mother from an overcrowded refugee camp, he would do it.

If there was anything he could do to keep his promise to her, then he would do it.

“Kirschstein, Bodt, I said get a move on! We don’t have time to waste arguing!” the officer screamed over her shoulder at them. “Gather your squads at your posts and get your asses to HQ for further instruction!”

Jean ignored her, ignored the rush of people moving past them, tried to ignore the way he could still hear his mom frantically scurrying about inside to find their most treasured belongings to take with her.

“ _Please_ , Marco. I know I’m putting you on the spot and it sucks and I’m so fucking sorry, but—”

“Okay.”

Someone shoved past and Jean toppled into Marco’s chest. He barely had time to steady himself before Marco was doing it for him, his face serious, eyes dark, and mouth set in a firm line.

“What?” Jean croaked, blinking in disbelief—not that he didn’t have complete faith in Marco, but he also didn’t expect him to cave after minimal persuasion.

“I’ll take her with me,” Marco said. “Just keep yourself safe in the meantime, okay? It would be meaningless if I helped her to safety only to have her to lose you.”

A mixture of relief and terror flooded Jean’s veins. His legs weakened for a moment, and he let Marco’s strong grip hold him up until he found his footing and pushed hard into his chest, arms firmly wrapping around his neck as he processed everything happening.

“Thank you,” Jean managed finally. “Fuck, thank you, _fuck_ , thank you so fucking much.”

He breathed in that sweet smell of citrus like it was the last time he ever would.

“Kirschstein, Bodt! Move it, _now_!”

“Keep safe,” Marco echoed firmly. Beads of sweat began to gather at his hairline, down his forehead. Jean ignored them to launch forward even further, propelled by the points of his toes, and kiss him, hard and heavy and desperate.

He barely had time to register what he’d done when Marco’s arms wrapped tight around his body, pulling him impossibly closer as he returned the gesture. As the seconds went on, it became less of a kiss and more of a bruising, frantic promise: _stay safe stay safe stay safe_.

_“Kirschstein! Bodt!”_

The officer’s scream was irate now, panicked. Her head was tilted over her shoulder, and the tears were back in her eyes. Further behind her, titans were storming through the hole in Wall Rose in tens and twenties of drooling, brainless beasts barely affected by the barrage of cannon fire assaulting them from unbroken sections of the wall.

“Go on,” Marco whispered against the seam of Jean’s lips, his voice strangely calm for what had just happened, what was still happening all around them. “Go be a hero. I’ll take care of her, I promise.”

 

* * *

The worst part was that he could hardly remember their names.

Gathered in the center of the HQ building, the small crowd around Jean was almost completely nameless: five faces he’d seen in passing, spent three years in and out of classes and training with, and still knew nothing about.

Did the girl with the glasses have a family she was waiting to return to? Had the boy with tears in his eyes already lost someone? How many of them, if any, were close to making the top ten? How many of them were going to survive until the end of the day?

“Do we have a plan of action?”

The boy in question—Tom, maybe, or Tim—looked older than his fifteen or sixteen years judging by the deep wrinkles carved around his dark eyes. His hands had been in a constant state of wringing together like old dishcloths since their arrival, a tic that only served to put Jean even more on edge.

“We wait for instruction,” Jean groused back. He fixed the kid with a harsh glare and turned back to the troops assembled in the courtyard. Squads were gathered in every corner, 34 out of 35 present, the 19th yet to return, and he tried his damnedest not to connect the dots too quickly—Marco was _fine_ , he had to be, his squad’s post was just further from headquarters than the rest, that was all.

Tom obviously had other things on his mind, though, and when he scoffed and crinkled up his hooked nose, Jean had to restrain himself from kicking the guy in the teeth.

“So that’s your plan? Sit around while the fucking world ends around us?” Tom yanked his thumb over his shoulder and two squads down, where a familiar face had his whole squad on their feet and cheering raucously. Eren, Armin, Thomas, Mina, Nac, a couple of others whose names Jean barely remembered either; all of them impatiently awaiting their own assignments. “If we were on Eren’s squad, we wouldn’t be sitting ducks!”

And that was when the final trigger was pulled. His body ran on autopilot; before he was even aware of it, Jean had Tom by the collar of his jacket and shoved against the wall, his forearm pinning his chest forcefully to the brick behind him.

“You want to be on Eren’s squad, go to Eren’s squad for all I fucking care,” he seethed right in Tom’s face. “My goal here is to make it through today alive, even if it means being a ‘sitting duck,’ as you so _nicely_ put it. If you want to be a reckless corpse, then by all means, leave.”

With a last shove, he let go of Tom and stormed off with a muttered, _“I’ll be back.”_

Jean stepped further into the courtyard, counting the squads again and again. Each time he came up with 24, he restarted. It was just a math error, right? He was never good at that stuff anyway. Marco’s squad was just out of order… right?

“Jean!” he heard over his shoulder, turned to see Connie and Sasha sitting side by side on the ground. Their squads were joined around them in a large circle.

Sasha tipped her head up and asked, “Have you seen Marco since this morning?”

“No,” Jean mumbled in return.

“Do you know where he is?”

“I don’t know, Sasha.”

“His squad was at the northern gate with Christa’s, weren’t they? She got back a few minutes ago, you’d think he—”

“I don’t fucking _know_ , Sasha!”

It exploded out of him, loud enough that neighboring squads went silent and stared like he was some kind of sideshow attraction. Jean had to pinch the skin between his pointer finger and thumb to keep from crying, because no, Sasha, he didn’t know where Marco was or if he even was okay, and no, Connie, that pitying look on your face isn’t helping the situation at all.

“We left my house and I asked him to take my mom to the gate with him. He said yes, we both left, and I… I haven’t seen him since.”

He conveniently left out the part where he smashed their faces together, the thought eating away at him that it was _his fault_ , _he_ did this, Marco was missing and it was all because of _him_.

“I don’t know where he is, I don’t know if he’s okay. I don’t—” Jean pinched his skin even harder, fighting with all he had not to start sobbing in front of the entire graduating class and the entire Garrison. “I don’t know if I sent him to his death.”

Sasha’s eyebrows pulled together sympathetically, and Jean turned away because it was all too close to the look on the commander’s face in that stupid nightmare.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” she said cautiously. False cheer colored her wavering voice. “If he’s making sure she evacuates, then it’s totally normal that he’s not back yet. I’ll bet Christa knows exactly where he is!”

 _If he’s anywhere,_ Jean thought with a scowl. _If I didn’t just send the two most important people in my life on a suicide mission._

By some small miracle, he was saved from the thought when a Garrison officer shouted, “Squads 15 through 20, move out for front line backup!” and as he joined his squad again, he tried and failed to ignore the snippet he caught of the officers’ conversation.

_“Did Squad 19 not make it back then? Someone ought to find out their names for condolence letters.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (•̀⌄•́)


	6. fighting for nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a hectic week, so i completely blanked on yesterday being my update day, i apologize!  
> also have i mentioned how strange (and fun) it feels to rewrite canon scenes from jean's perspective because boy's got some messy thought patterns
> 
> as you can see up ^^ there, **more warnings have been added** : this chapter contains a couple of minor character deaths
> 
> (also psst i have a [writing blog](http://ondistantships.tumblr.com/) or a [personal blog](http://mikashas.tumblr.com/) if you're into girls and small animals tagged with keysmashes)

The titans were everywhere.

The Trost Jean saw soaring over the buildings on his 3DMG was not the Trost of his childhood. The Wagners’ shop had been flattened by a boulder that towered over most of the smaller buildings. The pump at the end of his street was crushed beyond recognition, spewing water into the cobbled road and washing dirt and blood and severed body parts into the storm drains. A titan, mouth stained crimson with blood and entrails, clung to the mangled remnants of the clock tower with filthy, mud stained hands; another, beyond it, crushed three merchants’ carts with one stomp of its enormous foot.

He didn’t have the heart to look back and see if his home still stood.

The Garrison officer in charge of overseeing their squad fled at least an hour ago, leaving the six of them on their own to fend for themselves, and Jean’s plan of action thus far had been avoidance. Even if it pissed off his squad, even if Tom shot a scathing look every time Jean shouted a direction that had them shooting behind chimneys and beneath overhangs, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

This was what was keeping them alive; this was what was going to let them see the end of the day, and if it bothered them, well, they wouldn’t have to see him ever again after the night was over, anyway.

He was about to call over his shoulder for the squad to follow him into the southern corner of the district when a piercing cry cut through the eerie stillness that hovered over the crackling flames and rolling smoke clouds of destruction that the town had dissipated into.

Jean held one hand out behind him, a clear stop sign to the rest of the squad, and landed heavily on top of a partially crushed rooftop he recognized dimly as his old babysitter’s house from when he was just a little kid. The other five followed with forceful crunches of their boots against broken roof tiles.

“Where did that come from?” he demanded. “Did anyone hear that scream? Do you know who it was?”

“I think it came from closer to the main gate,” glasses girl replied. “I saw some people gathering there earlier.”

“Well, why the fuck were they just standing there, waiting to be eaten?” Jean roared to nobody in particular. He shoved his hands through his hair, gripping fistfuls of the longer growth of it that was sticking to his scalp with cold sweat. He hadn’t seen Marco, hadn’t seen anyone he’d recognize without a second glance since they left HQ building two hours ago, didn’t know how many of them were even left to see.

“It’s a better idea,” Tom snapped from his other side. When Jean turned his heavy glare on him, he didn’t back down. “We’re going to waste all of our gas flitting from building to building to get away! If we stick in one place and adjust accordingly, we—”

“Fine,” Jean caved. He didn’t meet Tom’s eyes to see the expression on his face, and instead wiped an arm across his damp forehead—the grey clouds above were beginning to spit fat raindrops in his face, and if _that_ didn’t bring back memories of his last days living here as a kid.

But Tom had a point. Aimlessly shooting between buildings with no solid plan but “try not to die” tended to do some work on a small tank, and straying so far from the HQ building meant that there were no refills and no chance of swinging away, just the remaining graduates left on top of a building in the middle of town with nothing to defend themselves with but their fists and blades, waiting for inevitable death or an improbable rescue.

“You!” Jean shouted at glasses girl, rounding in on her.

“Ruth,” she supplied, curt. Her eyes were dark and serious. “My name is Ruth.”

“ _Ruth_ , sorry,” he amends. “You said you saw people, right?”

Ruth nodded, and she jabbed an unsteady thumb over her shoulder. “Not far from the front gate, by the Garrison post.”

“Can you lead the way?”

Her eyes went wide beneath raindrop spattered lenses. She answered, not quite as steady as before, like she hadn’t been expecting the question, “C-can I… I, uh… Yeah, a-are you sure?”

Jean gave her a stern look of approval, brows narrowed but lips tilted into the tiniest semblance of a smile he had managed since the wall was broken. “You saw them, I didn’t.”

She nodded again, more decisively. “So just go and you’ll follow?”

“Do you think you can you handle it?”

“Yes, squad leader!”

Jean paused to stretch his overworked muscles while Ruth pushed onto her tiptoes to plan out her route. His body ached where his gear had pulled too tight across old training scars, the old ankle injury acting up from hitting too many rooftops in too little time, the scar between his eyebrows from the same incident sending phantom shooting pains across his forehead. Stretching gave him a moment to pause, contemplate. He looked at Tom, whose hands were still wringing.

“You were right,” Jean said quietly, words coming out of his mouth like hot bile climbing up his throat.

“Huh?” Tom’s eyebrows knitted together. It only made the deep crease between them more obvious.

“The gas thing,” Jean clarified. “I wasn’t thinking about conserving gas, I was—I don’t fucking know what I was doing. I suck at this shit, my head’s all over the place.”

Tom didn’t have time to reply before Ruth was gliding off the building with a shout to follow her and the familiar sound of her 3DMG grasping the awning of a farther-off building.

 

* * *

 

When they caught up to the rest of the trainees, the situation wasn’t much better.

The rain was coming down in buckets, soaking them to the bone. Most of the people left were impatiently thwacking at their gas cans with sopping wet hands, dripping sleeves. Connie and Ymir were shouting at each other beneath the meager cover of an awning set up on a balcony, fists clenched in front of them. Sasha was wandering between groups of people, offering half-hearted encouragements that would serve more effective if her eyes weren’t rimmed with bright red veins. Beneath a dormer window, Armin was curled into himself, face pressed to his legs and Christa kneeling beside him, one of his limp hands clasped in both of hers.

Jean’s gear gave one pathetic puff of gas and he crashed to the rooftop in front of them with a hiss of pain.

“It’s okay, see?” Christa said quietly. Her head was tipped forward so Armin could see her in the miniscule gap between his knees. “It’s just Jean’s squad. They all made it here, isn’t that great? Can you look up for me?”

Armin didn’t budge, other than the trembling of his shoulders, and Christa’s forced, watery smile faltered. Jean staggered toward them, and she aimed a desperate, pleading expression in his direction.

“What’s up with him?” Jean asked.

No noise came out, but Jean could clearly make out the name Christa mouthed to him. _Eren_.

What about Eren? Did he hurt him? Did he abandon his squad? Where _was_ he?

Jean sat on Armin’s other side, an awkward rigidity settling itself into his back muscles. He had no idea how to comfort him, no idea how to ask exactly what was wrong, no idea if Armin would even respond in this state. He settled on a stiff pat of his small, quivering shoulder.

“Um, it’s… okay, man,” Jean tried clumsily. “I don’t know what the hell happened, but uh…”

Armin murmured something into his pants that came out as nothing but an unintelligible, muffled hum.

“What was that, Armin?” Christa offered. “It’s okay, it’s okay, you can talk. We’re here, we’ve got you.”

When Armin’s head lifted, sopping wet blond locks stuck to the sides of his face and neck, the look on his face was nothing short of broken: eyes red and raw and unseeing, nose swollen and running, mouth open in a small gape. Jean tried to scratch his back reassuringly, but Armin shrugged the hand off with a shake of his head.

“You should’ve left me to die,” he croaked. “Should’ve just left me to die with him. Ymir’s right, why did _I_ , of all people—”

“Armin!” Christa’s voice was loud now, booming. Jean had never even heard her raise it before.

What struck him about Christa Lenz was that she was never predictable. She always had a reputation of being the designated sweetheart of the 104th squad, the person you went to when you were having a bad day and needed cheering up, who would always split her food with you if you were hungry, but there were moments like this, when her soft voice had a sharper, livelier edge to it, when her eyebrows knit together and she gave a dark look that suggested that she had been spending too much time with Ymir. They had never been close, he and Christa, but Jean found that he almost preferred the second version. She seemed more natural, more genuine. Cloying sweetness didn’t come inherently to anyone; even people like Marco had their moments of weakness or anger (even if that was the last name Jean wanted to think about when he still hadn’t turned up either).

But she shook her head and smiled, kinder and gentler than before, and the moment was gone as quick as it had come.

“She was wrong, okay? I know better than anyone that Ymir says things she doesn’t mean sometimes,” she said, squeezing Armin’s palm with small fingers. Her wide blue eyes left him for a moment to glare at Ymir across the way. “He deserves— _they_ deserve to be alive, Armin, but so do you.”

Jean rose back to his aching feet and raised questioning eyebrows at Christa over Armin’s head. “What happened?” he whispered, hoping Armin wouldn’t be able to hear.

But he did, and he wrenched his hand out of Christa’s like it had been burned, pulling it back into his own space so he could cover his leaking eyes with it.

“Our whole s-squad,” he sobbed. His words were barely decipherable through his inconsolable tears: slurred, choked, punctuated with endless hiccups that sound wrong coming from his lips. “ _E-Eren_ , he—he saved me from a t-titan, and now he’s _gone_.”

He buried his face back in his knees with a murmured, _“I wish it was me I don’t deserve to be here he does he does,”_ and any words Jean had planned to say dried up in his throat.

Eren was supposed to live to harass Jean when he finally did join the Military Police. He was supposed to live to be a dumbass in the Survey Corps. He was supposed live so they could be friendly rivals between branches.

He wasn’t supposed to _die_ before he got to _live_.

Eren Jaeger, the suicidal bastard, living up to the name in a way that made Jean’s stomach turn.

In any other situation, he would’ve made a joke about it, but as it was, it knocked him clean on his ass. His legs went out beneath him, and with no Marco to steady him, he hit the shingles of the roof the remaining squads had perched on with a loud _thud_ and he buried his head in his bent knees, listening to the muffled sobs coming from Armin’s throat.

“C-Can I h-have a minute alone?” Armin managed through his tears. “I j-just need to breathe. I’m s-sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, honey. We’d be happy to give you space,” Christa said. She stood, hauled Jean to his feet with all the force in her deceptively tiny body. Her face was serious when she asked, “Are you okay, Jean?”

Jean grumbled something he didn’t even remember saying, and Christa stuck around for long enough to make sure that he was steady enough on his feet to stand on his own before she leapt onto the balcony to wrench Ymir away from where she had lunged at Connie. He sunk back to the shingles for so long that he lost track of time, only knew that the rain had dissipated at some point and Sasha wandered over to check on him at another, a gentle pat on the shoulder and a supportive scratch up his spine before she moved on to the next person.

He’d told himself long ago that he didn’t care, but the reality sunk harsh into his bones. Eren, his whole squad (and Jean grit his teeth remembering seeing Thomas around town as a kid, kissing Nac on a dare at thirteen, just last night learning that Mina and Marco were _family_ ), countless others: gone forever. Marco: missing in action, and, come to think about it, he hadn’t seen Annie, Reiner, or Bertholdt since the early morning either.

So many innocent lives wasted, and for what? Giving up? Abandoning the district? The Garrison were already retreating. The citizens were already evacuated. At this rate, Jean wouldn’t have a hometown by the end of the day. He’d have to start all over in the inner wall, rebuild his entire life—

“Jean!”

The voice came out of some dreamlike place he had gotten himself into, he knew it. Jean snorted bitterly at the tiles beneath himself. No way in hell that voice would come to him right as he was beginning to accept things as they were. No way in hell.

He was tugged to his feet again, and the voice called, “Jean, you’re okay! I hadn’t seen you since this morning, I was so scared I’d lost y—Jean?”

He stared into Marco’s face like he was looking right through him.

“You _are_ okay… right?” A hand covered his forehead, warm and solid. “You’re not running a temperature, but the rain _was_ bad for a while there, so—”

“I’m dead, aren’t I,” Jean deadpanned.

“What?”

“I’m dead,” he repeated. “You’re not real.”

“Jean, _what_. I’m here, I’m alive. We both are.”

Everything hit him like a ton of bricks, like… like the fucking Colossal Titan hitting Wall Rose. He collapsed into Marco’s chest until the boy’s arms encircled him tightly, rocking him back and forth while he squeezed around Marco’s waist like his life depended on it.

“Eren’s gone, Thomas is gone, Nac, _Mina_ —”

Marco’s grip loosened. “Mina…?”

Jean’s did too. “Marco, I’m s—”

“It’s f-fine.” He swallowed thickly, Adam’s apple bobbing unsteadily. He was lying, blatantly, the tight set of his squared jaw making it obvious, but if he needed to push it aside, compartmentalize for the time being to keep it from breaking his focus, Jean wouldn’t argue with him. “We—we had to expect this, right? I’m… willing to die fighting, too, but… are you sure she…”

“Jaeger’s whole squad, minus Armin. All of them,” Jean confirmed shakily. He buried his face into Marco’s shoulder, just like the night before, and he had never been so fucking happy to smell the citrus that lingered permanently on his skin. “But you’re _alive_ , holy fucking shit. I thought you—I thought you’d—”

“I’m okay, I’m here, shh,” Marco whispered back. He cradled Jean’s body in his arms like he was something precious, and Jean didn’t fucking care that they were being stared at. Let them stare, his best friend was alive. “There were people fighting at the northern gate. I had to help break it up, and it took longer than expected, but Reiner, Bert, and Annie found me and helped out in the end. I’m so sorry for scaring you, Jean.”

“And my mom?” Jean’s voice trembled more than he wanted to admit.

“Escorted safely to your aunts waiting at the gate.”

He pulled back enough to look Marco in the face. His big eyes were filled to the brim with tears, but the ever-present smile was still there, albeit fainter than usual.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jean breathed, so close to Marco’s skin. “You’re the best, I owe you so fucking much, I l—”

Marco prompted him to go on with a gentle, “Yeah?”

Jean shook his head of the thought, angled his lips away again. “Thank you, Marco.”

“I’d say ‘anytime,’ but I really hope this isn’t something we have to deal with often.”

Their desperate, cathartic laughter was broken by the loud crash of someone landing on the roof. Jean whips his head to the source of the sound.

Mikasa. If there was any hope for the situation, it was with Mikasa.

Her footsteps pounded across the rooftop, past groups of shell-shocked onlookers, and she stopped in front of Armin for a moment before she gathered him into her arms. Jean barely made out another guttural sob from Armin’s throat into her chest before he felt like he should look away, like he was interrupting something.

When the crying died down, Mikasa stepped to the middle of the crowd. Armin’s hand was held tight in hers, though he was still slumped at her side, hiding his tear-stained face behind his hair. Mikasa, however, remained rigid in her posture, and she gripped a single 3DMG blade in one hand.

“Marco,” she said firmly. “You were the last one near HQ, right?”

“Y-yeah,” Marco answered unsteadily from Jean’s side.

“If we take out the titans around it, we can feasibly get inside and replenish our gas enough to retreat with the rest of the Garrison, correct?”

“Yes?” Marco threw out. “But even with you on our side, there’s way too many of them for us to take on, Mikasa.”

“We can do it,” Mikasa snapped. Marco stammered for a moment, but she continued, facing the entire crowd of people on the rooftop. “I’m strong, stronger than all of you. I could kill all those titans there, even if I’m alone, and if you—if _all of you_ don’t even want to try, you’re either incompetent or a spineless coward.”

A few people shouted dissents at her, claiming she’d die on her own, but she turned with a dark look on her face.

 “If I die, I die,” she said. “But if I win, I’ll live. I can’t win if I don’t fight.”

It echoed Armin’s words from the night before: _nothing good will happen unless we put our necks on the line_ , but her voice was shaky, uneven, unlike Mikasa. Dimly, Jean wondered if this was her way of coping with Eren, the overcompensation, just like Marco’s compartmentalizing. Sure, she was on her way to becoming humanity’s finest, but taking on all of those titans on her own? Impossible.

Then again, if it were Marco, he couldn’t say that he wouldn’t do the same.

Without another word, Mikasa dropped from the rooftop and rushed across another with what little gas she had left. Armin shakily followed her, and Jean only had to look at Marco’s stunned face next to him for a second before his mind was made up.

If he couldn’t beat them, he would join them.

He unsheathed his blades and turned to the stunned crowd left in Mikasa’s wake.

“Hey! Were we trained to let our comrades fight alone? Do you _really_ want to be the spineless cowards she was talking about?” he shouted, tearing off behind her.

He registered a pair of boots clacking against the rooftops behind him, then another, and soon the rest of the squad was racing behind him and Mikasa, and all Jean could hope was that he was made the right choice in following her.

 

* * *

 

He was wrong, again, when Mikasa’s gear gave one final puff of gas before she plummeted into an alleyway halfway to the HQ building.

Jean tried to keep his head clear, but it was impossible. All around him, people were being snatched out of the air by brainless beasts and getting swallowed whole.

He was frozen on the edge of a rooftop. He couldn’t move, hadn’t been able to since an abnormal titan cornered his squad over the street he used to go to elementary school on as a little kid.

“Stay away from me!” Tom cried from below, tucked into a side street and waving his blades at the titan backing him into the wall.

“Tom!” Ruth screamed. “Just hold on, I’ll get you!”

She shot past Jean’s head with her last burst of gas, only for a titan to latch onto one of her cables and smack her against the side of the building like a ragdoll.

Tom never stood a chance.

 

* * *

 

Ruth Klein. Tom Kranz. Lena Petkova. Percy Millstone. Lucy Rosenberg.

It was unfortunate that Jean only remembered his squad’s names after he had watched them all be devoured before his eyes one by one. And to think he thought he’d _deserved_ that top ten spot.

Frozen to the edge of the rooftop, he couldn’t stop staring at the pools of blood that were once his squad members, people who just lost their lives because he was too fucking scared to move. A thick bead of sweat dripped from his forehead all the way below the collar of his shirt, his clammy hands faltered for a moment on the triggers of his 3DMG, but otherwise he couldn’t. Fucking. Move.

Why didn’t he stop them? Why couldn’t he find the guts to say _“hey, guys, don’t go ahead yet or you’ll all be eaten while the rest of us watch”_? He was their leader, all he had to do was give the order, maybe kick their asses into gear, but—

But he didn’t.

He’d thought for so long that he was ready for this. That he’d graduate at the top of his class, breeze right into the Military Police, and climb the ranks without a hitch. He thought he could be in charge of things, be a _leader_.

With blood on his hands that wasn’t evaporating with the rest of the titan carcasses around them, all he knew was that what he’d once thought was a fucking joke—he wasn’t cut out for this, never would be if he was going to continue to be responsible for the death of innocent people he never had any clue how to lead in the first place.

Titans were gathering beneath his feet, mindlessly grappling for whatever bits and pieces of flesh they could get their filthy hands on, and he wondered, if only for a moment, what would happen if he were to take one more step forward, fall from the roof and into their grabby fingers. There were at least seven or eight of them, all concentrated in the narrow street, and—

_That was exactly it._

If there were this many titans converged in this one place, then they had to come from somewhere else, right? Trost may have been swarmed, but there were only so many of them left still, and that many titans in one place _had_ to have cleared some semblance of a path to the supply tower.

Jean gritted his teeth and finally moved, just enough to turn around. Marco was behind him with Sasha, and Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie weren’t much further back. All five of them stared at him with wide eyes, even Annie, and Jean took one deep breath in before he bellowed, “Go! Hurry to HQ while we still have the chance!”

He leapt from one rooftop to the next, sprinted as quickly as he could before the titans could catch onto his motives, and didn’t chance a look back to see if anyone was dumb enough to have followed him after he’d inadvertently killed the last people he was supposed to be in charge of.

But it was now or never. If they ran out of their last puffs of gas, they were dead, but if somehow, they managed to get to HQ in one piece, they were one step closer. The more he talked to himself, Jean thought with a bitter sort of laugh, the more he started sounding like Armin and Mikasa.

But the more he started thinking, the more he started believing that they could do this, they could _win_ —

“Jean!”

This time, when he heard it, he automatically angled his head towards Marco’s voice.

“Thank you!” Marco called through panting breaths. “I was frozen back there; I only snapped out of it because of you!”

“Huh?” Jean shouted back.

“I told you before, didn’t I? You’re cut out to lead!”

Marco smiled just like he did that night in the infirmary: sunrise and Saturdays and fresh fruit, and Jean fought a losing battle with the grin threatening to make an appearance on his own face.

“I seriously don’t know,” he said back. They were looming closer to the HQ building now, one rooftop away. “You ready to jump?”

Marco sighed, shaky but sure. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

With their final dregs of gasoline, they shot through the windows on the upper floor of the building. The glass splintered and crashed around them, cutting faint lines across their faces, hands, any bit of skin peeking from beneath their shirts and jackets. When they tumbled gracelessly onto the wooden floor inside the building, they were covered in mixture of sweat and blood and dirt, but they _made it_.

The rest of the windows shattered in quick succession—Sasha tumbling in headfirst, followed by a powerful kick from Annie’s boots, Reiner and Bertholdt not far behind, the rest of the stragglers a few seconds later. A sigh that was just short of relief left Jean’s lips.

“Who all is here?” someone called. “Did we all make it?”

“I don’t know,” said someone else. “Has anyone seen Connie or Armin or Mikasa?”

“I saw Armin grab Mikasa a while after she fell. Do you think she—”

“Take cover!”

The last yell was Reiner’s, deep and booming, and within seconds, the last window was shattered in flashes of black, blond, and shaven hair. He took the lead then, used his mass to shove open a door leading into the main hallway of the building, and everyone followed suit, but Jean stuck behind.

Speak of the well-timed devils, Mikasa, Armin, and Connie stood bathed in sunlight, dusting shards of broken glass off of themselves.

“What the fuck took you so long?” Jean shouted at them. Mikasa nodded silently out of the broken windows, but Connie was the one who spoke up.

“Dude, I don’t even fucking know,” he said. “There’s a rogue titan out there, and it’s—it’s, like, _massacring_ the other titans.”

_“What?”_

“One of the titans is completely disregarding any humans in favor of killing other titans,” Armin clarified, noticeably less shaken up than before. He was almost _smiling_ at the revelation. “I’m not going to question it too much just yet, but we’ve lured it here to distract the other titans for the time being.”

“Again I say, _what_?”

Connie gripped Jean’s shoulder, thrust him roughly over to the gaping hole of the nearest shattered window. “Man, just look at this shit for yourself.”

The rainclouds were gone now, the sun shining in earnest as a titan, more visibly muscular than the rest with more angular features and piercingly green eyes, _wailed_ like its life depended on it before its massive fist collided with the head of another and snapped it clean off. The thing was massive, vapor pouring from every orifice, and when its victim fell to the ground in a heap of steam and exposed bone, it let out a cry that sounded almost _proud_. A finger broke off in the process, only to grow back seconds later, and it wailed again before stalking off to find its next prey.

Jean stood in awe of the sight, unable to fathom what he had laid his eyes on. The titan cried out as it stalked down the street, furious and mournful all at once.

Just when he thought they’d had it all figured out, he was dead wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GEE, i wonder WHAT scene could POSSIBLY come after they get into the supply room (hint hint wink wink) and WHAT could POSSIBLY happen during it (hint hint wink wink)
> 
> as always, thank you for reading and comments are appreciated~


	7. into the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i listened to ['i will follow you into the dark'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDHY1D0tKRA) on a loop while writing this chapter if that gives you a hint of what's to come

“I don’t trust it.”

Jean balled the sleeve of his jacket over his fist and rubbed it in circles along the smooth, dusty barrel of the gun in his hand. They’d found them, boxes upon boxes of them, tucked into a supply closet between two offices and covered in dirt, and while he wasn’t exactly sure how effective a bunch of shotguns were going to be against seven titans converged in bottom of the supply tower beneath them, Armin’s plan was the only thing they had going for them at the moment.

“I don’t either, but does anyone?” Marco threw out. His own gun was resting by his side, a safe distance away. He smiled, just enough for Jean to catch. “We’re just using it as a weapon, aren’t we? It’s not like we’re telling it our plan of attack.”

“Fucking hilarious, Bodt,” Jean snipped back. He made sure Marco saw the glint of a smirk he threw in his direction. “You ready to shoot some titans in the eyeballs?”

“Eugh, not quite,” Marco groaned, burying his face into his hands. “It’s not that Armin’s plan isn’t great, because it is, it… it’s just that the whole taking charge of that huge group of people and making sure they’re all safe and firing at the right time kind of freaks me out, you know?”

“I’d have thought it was the idea of shooting a giant eyeball and getting eye goo all over you.”

“Well, now that you _mention it_.”

A swift punch collided with Jean’s shoulder, and _god_ , it felt good to laugh again.

“You know you have nothing to worry about, right?” Jean tried. “I’m pretty sure you’ve been voted, like, unofficial Most Likely to Become a Commander by literally everyone.”

“I’m not—You’re embellishing, you jerk.”

“ _Oh_ no,” Jean said, setting the gun down on the ground. He dropped his hands to his lap. “No way, you don’t get to randomly drop onto a rooftop and say, _‘hey, Jean, you’re a good leader!’_ and not let me do the same.”

“You really don’t have to.”

“I do, ya fuckin’ loser, stop playing all cute and coy.”

Marco looked at him with wide eyes. Jean swore he heard him repeat _“cute”_ under his breath, but he didn’t mention it. If Marco Bodt didn’t already know he was the cutest thing in the walls, that conversation would have to happen another time.

“But you know, like… I know I gave you shit about it last night, but your weird tendency to help people at all costs is actually really fucking awesome, y’know?”

The stunned look on Marco’s face slipped into something more casual. “You don’t have to look like you’re choking on acid when you say it,” he said, cracking a smile.

Jean huffed. He puffed out his chest, stuck his chin up in some false show of pride. “So I can’t do the compliment thing like you. Whatever.”

“You’re nervous.”

And he was, for several reasons. Because when it was just an idea coming out of Armin’s mouth, slaying a four meter class titan with nothing but his blades seemed like it would be easy enough, and now that the remains of the squad were preparing to actually play it out, all he could think of was Tom screaming as the titan ripped his body in half with one bite, of what would happen if he failed, or if Marco failed.

Of what he would do if he lost Marco forever.

“What if I am?” he grumbled defensively.

Marco shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with that. _I’m_ nervous.” He put a hand on Jean’s shoulder, and there was an odd feeling there. Burning. Even through his shirt and jacket, Jean felt it: smoldering low, threatening to spread like wildfire. He wanted to believe it was just in his head, but all he could remember was the burning feeling when he’d pressed his lips to Marco’s so fervently before. “I’m pretty sure it’s a natural human response.”

“I hate it,” Jean said. He poked at the gun on the ground, closest to the other hand that Marco had planted on the wood to lean on. His fingers itched to reach out and touch it the way Marco had so casually touched his shoulder. He shoved the side of his palm against Marco’s and hoped he’d take the hint.

Marco’s eyebrows raised. He looked at Jean’s hand, then Jean’s face, and when Jean nodded, Marco flushed and reached slowly, one finger at a time until their hands were clasped together tight.

Leaning against the wall with their fingers twined between their laps felt like relief. It felt like home, in a time where Jean wasn’t so sure he even had one anymore.

 

* * *

 

The lift rose through the floor not ten minutes later, the kids onboard shouting that it was up and running as expected. Their hands stayed clasped when they stood, when Marco hiked the strap of his gun over his shoulder and Jean handed his to one of the guys getting off of the lift.

“The plan’s still as you said it, yeah, Armin?” Connie called from across the room. He handed off his gun to a girl barely taller than himself and pushed on his tiptoes to find Armin across the crowd.

Armin turned to him, and Jean swore he could still see the tear tracks from earlier shining in the light.

“Yeah,” Armin answered. He raised his voice to address the whole room. “Um, yes! Everything should be able to go as planned. You seven in the rafters will take the stairs so you can climb the scaffolding along the walls. The rest of us on the lift will attract the titans, and the second Marco gives the okay and we start shooting, you jump off the beams and slay them. Are we good? Is—is that okay with everyone?”

The resounding _yes_ from the room startled him, if the slight tremor to his shoulders was anything to go by. Mikasa steadied him, arms around his shoulders as he gaped in silence. She dropped a soft kiss to his bangs, and his hands dug into her jacket.

“Don’t worry,” Jean caught her saying. “You’ve got a talent for this. That intuition has saved my life before, _and_ Eren’s.”

Armin said something back, but Jean didn’t catch it before Marco’s fingers squeezed tight around his palm.

“You’ll do great, but good luck anyway,” he said softly.

Jean spluttered for something to say, his mind a swirling mess of Mikasa sending Armin off with reassuring words, even if they were her last.

“You’re probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” tumbled out of his mouth, caught in a rush of too-rapid thoughts. When he caught himself after a moment of staring, he stammered, “So, uh.. yeah.”

The smile on Marco’s face as he disappeared into the lift stayed with him the whole time he descended the stairs down to the supply room.

 

* * *

 

From his perch just below the ceiling, Jean could see the entire storeroom. Seven titans roamed mindlessly, torch to torch, crate to crate. None of them seemed to notice the seven people precariously balanced on wooden beams in the ceiling, clutching 3DMG swords in their hands, at least.

“At least there’s still just the seven,” Connie said from the next beam over.

“ _That’s_ some kind of optimism,” Jean snorted. “At least there’s _only_ seven brainless idiot beasts waiting to snap us in half in their gaping maws.”

“Jean,” Reiner said from his other side. It was firm enough to get the point across: _don’t be such an asshole_.

He rolled his eyes and readjusted the blade his hand. A quick looked to his left and right told him that everyone was still in formation: himself, Connie, Reiner, Sasha, Annie, Mikasa, and Bertholdt. All of the top ten who weren’t either on the lift to guide everyone else, like Marco and Christa, or—

Or dead somewhere, inside of a titan’s stomach. Like someone else they once knew.

The titans hobbling in meandering circles suddenly seemed so much more real up close, and Jean swallowed the lump in his throat as the bottom of the lift slowly began to peek out from the shaft in the middle of the ceiling.

“Get ready,” Mikasa whispered measuredly from the furthest beam to the right.

The lift slowed to a halt, and the telltale sound of guns being locked and loaded echoed throughout the supply room. It caught the ears of the titans, apparently, because they all slowly looked over their drooping shoulders. Oversized and pus-lined eyes blinked slowly at the lift full of people as if they were a prepackaged snack.

Marco said something to the lift that cut through the eerie silence. Jean couldn’t make out the words at all from this far away, but just the sound of his voice was enough. It focused him. He looked over at Mikasa, and she nodded at him with a stern expression on her face, her fingers white-knuckled around her blade handles.

A titan stomped its way in front of the lift, and Jean could barely make out Marco’s wide-eyed, tense expression staring it down so closely, so brave. Armin close to his side had the same looked as him: forced valor over absolute anxiety.

_You’ve got this_ , Jean willed to them. _They can’t hurt you if you hurt them first_.

Someone screamed when the titan’s massive head turned, and it was just quiet enough inside that Marco’s reassuring cry of, _“It’s okay, calm down! Lure it in just a bit closer!”_ echoed in the room. His voice was trembling; if his hands weren’t holding so tight around his gun, he’d probably be scratching his nose like he always did when he was anxious.

“We can’t let them have the advantage,” Reiner whispered hastily over his shoulder. “Try your hardest to get them in one strike.”

Connie chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy one. “Easier said than done, big man.”

All seven titans were rounding in on the lift now. The first one was still face-to-face with Marco and Armin—any closer and they’d be inside of its unnervingly grinning mouth. It took one last step, and Marco shouted louder than Jean had ever heard him before.

_“Fire!”_

The room exploded into raucous firing, gun smoke, and the deep bellows of injured titans, but there was no time to take it all in before all seven people on the beams dashed forward to catch the giant bastards before they could regenerate their vision.

Jean leapt off of his beam with a yell, blades clenched tight in his fists. When they cut through the nape of the titan’s neck with the sickly _squish_ noise that he’d come to associate with the tearing of flesh, he felt bile climb up his throat, but when the titan collapsed to the floor before the soles of his boots did, there was a strange feeling of pride in his chest.

His first titan kill and he didn’t even have any gas in his 3DMG. If Eren were still alive, he couldn’t say he wouldn’t be bragging right in his smug little face. It was the strangest place to realize he already missed him, in a room full of screaming soldiers and dead titans, but maybe it was the most fitting.

“Is that all of them?” Reiner barked. Five titans had hit the floor; the last two, for some reason, had yet to.

“It’s Sasha and Connie!” Bertholdt shouted, pointing a steaming, bloody blade in their direction.

Something in Jean broke.

Not Eren, his squad, Sasha, and Connie in one day.

He could get over losing people he never knew the names of or the people he just met today—it was the nature of war, after all, that innocent people were going to lose their lives. Maybe one day he’d get over never being able to truly compete with Eren, one day when he was older and higher up in the Military Police and drunkenly thinking back on the past.

But losing two of the people he held closest to him, two people he cared enough about to introduce to his mother, two people he’d somehow unconsciously started planning into his future without even realizing it? He’d never get over that. There was no way in hell.

He could hear Sasha crying, but he couldn’t see her, just the two wide-eyed titans swiping furiously at her feet as she screamed bloody murder. One stumbled as she and Connie dove across the floor, out of its reach, and the other clumsily tripped over its gargantuan feet, landing with a hard _smack_ that reverberated throughout the room.

All the while Jean was stuck to the spot, but then there was a flash of black, then one of blonde, and the last two titans stopped moving.

Mikasa stood in the wreckage, Annie not two steps behind her, both of their blades covered in steaming titan blood.

_“Mikasa!”_ Sasha screamed, diving for the other girl. Her hair had mostly fallen out of its ponytail at that point, stuck to the sides of her face with sweat and tears. “You saved me!”

“Are you hurt anywhere?” Mikasa implored.

“I’m safe, thanks to you!”

“Good. Then stand up, now.”

Connie’s thank you to Annie was quieter in comparison, and she shrugged it off with a hidden smile and a mutter of _“Don’t mention it”_ before Reiner and Bertholdt were immediately flanking her with quiet jibes that only served to make her roll her eyes before she pushed away from them with the usual stony look on her face.

They were safe—not just Sasha and Connie, but _all of them_. Now they could resupply, retreat behind the wall with the Garrison, and _finally_ , this nightmare could be over.

Jean rushed to the lift in his excitement as it slowly descended the rest of the way to the floor.

“We got them all!” he shouted. “Everyone stock up, we’re all clear!”

The entire lift seemed to breathe a sigh all at once. Armin hadn’t smiled so wide since the early morning, and Marco looked so excited he nearly collapsed before Armin steadied him with a look of pride.

There wasn’t even a second between the lift touching the ground and Marco’s impossibly long legs hopping over the low wall that separated him from the seven other trainees and the seven steaming, disintegrating titan corpses strewn across the stone floor. There was even less time before his arms found their way around Jean’s neck, their bodies slotting perfectly against each other’s.

Marco was sweating almost as much as Jean was, trembling almost twofold, and his breath came in erratic bursts against the shell of Jean’s ear as he tried in vain to steady it, but Jean didn’t care. He didn’t have a single shit in the world to give. He hugged around Marco’s waist as tightly as his exhausted, overworked arms would allow, and he’d never been so happy to inhale the smell of oranges.

 

* * *

 

In the time it took for the titans to deteriorate, they located the supplies: crates and crates full of extra gas cans, larger tanks against the walls with hoses to connect and refill. There was even a water pump in the corner and enough scraps of rags and buckets scrounged together around it to clean up the sticky, dried blood that had been cling to half of the surviving soldiers since they crashed through the windows however long ago it was—a couple of hours, maybe, but time seemed to move so fast that no one was really quite sure.

Jean wrung out his rag over his bucket to swipe at the last unwashed glass cut beneath his shirt, hissing between his teeth as cold, rough fabric scrapes across the fresh wound. It left a small trail of brown-red in its wake, still open just enough to stain his collar with a thin ring of blood, but he threw the rag back into the bucket for the last time anyway. Too tired, too ready to get the hell out of the dim, stuffy building to care about a stained shirt.

Funny how much that would have bothered him before.

Jean tugged his jacket back up over his shoulders, as slowly as he could without agitating his throbbing muscles, and he paused midway up the second one when he caught an auburn ponytail a few buckets down, dripping wet and swinging like a pendulum behind its owner’s back. Whoever it was had a rag over their face, held in place by their hands, and their shoulders were shaking as if they had been crying.

“Sasha?” Jean tried quietly.

Sasha dropped the rag with a start and blinked her eyes slowly open, vibrant red veins rimming warm brown irises. Thick droplets clung to her long eyelashes, and Jean couldn’t tell if it was water or tears or a mixture of the two sticking them together like that.

“Oh,” she breathed, steadying a hand over her heaving chest. “It’s just you.”

“Just me,” Jean echoed flatly. “Hey.”

“Hi,” said Sasha. With one hand, she pushed her soaked bangs back from her face. “I never asked if Marco got your mom to Sina safe or not.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she’s there. She’s safe.”

“Good.” Sasha smiled, but only just. “I like her. More than you, probably.”

“Not that hard to do.”

Tense quiet settled between them. Sasha kept glancing over her shoulder like she was looking for someone, missing something, but she didn’t move. Jean didn’t either, frozen to the spot. He wished he hadn’t dropped his rag, that he still had it in his hands to wring again so his fingers didn’t feel as idle and useless as he had been when Sasha’s life was on the line.

He looked her in the eyes, and neither of them moved a muscle.

How was he supposed to put into words the fear he’d felt when he was sure he was about to lose her and Connie? How was he supposed to apologize for staying stuck to the spot, listening to them beg for their lives, without even trying to help?

He didn’t, not yet, but Sasha didn’t say anything either. She only walked forward until her face was buried in his shoulder and cried, soft and quiet, into his chest.

“M’sorry,” Jean mumbled, slowly curling his arms around Sasha’s trembling shoulders. “M’so sorry, I should’ve done someth—”

“Don’t be, you f-friggin’ goof,” she said. “It’s not y-your burden to bear. We f-fucked up, but now we’re alive, and that—that’s that.”

“Is Connie okay?”

“He’s fine, just shaken up. Reiner gave him a pep talk.” She snorted brokenly, voice quiet and thick. “He s-sprang back to life pretty quick after that, resilient little shit.”

“Are _you_ okay?”

Silence, and Sasha’s hand gripped a tight fistful of the back of Jean’s jacket. It was answer enough.

They stood there, embarrassingly hugging and crying, for long enough that Sasha’s quiet sobs dissipated into a mild case of the sniffles. She backed out of Jean’s grip to push onto the very tips of her toes to crush a wet, sloppy kiss to his temple, and she and her rag were gone without a word.

 

* * *

 

By the time Jean returned to his 3DMG, left on a stack of crates in a far corner of the supply room, Marco had already secured himself a gas tank to refill with, and his long legs were dangling off of the edge of the crates as he did it.

“Hey!” he said, residual cheer from their victory still coloring his voice bright and happy. “There should be enough here for both of us to fill up.”

Jean grunted in recognition, hiking himself up onto the ledge. He didn’t say a word as he attached the hose to his gas can, or as he crossed his legs over each other in an aborted attempt to take up as little space as possible, like shrinking in size would make him vanish altogether.

Now that the list of things to be worried for was about seven titans shorter, his mind was in overdrive. All the loss, all the tragedy, the guilt of the day washed over him in waves. All he wanted to do was disappear for a while. Go back in time, maybe, to last night beneath the stars with Marco and Mikasa and Armin and… and Eren. When there was nothing to worry about but whether or not they could find the North Star before they got caught and sent inside for bed.

“Hey,” said Marco, quieter this time. Jean barely glanced up from his bruised knuckles to look at him. “You okay?”

“S’nothing,” Jean murmured in reply. It was stupid, really. Marco not only lost Eren, but his own _cousin_ as well, and he was handling things a million times better. Jean was just a selfish little crybaby who had to make everything about himself.

“You sure?” And _god_ , Marco’s eyes were liquid in the firelight of the torches lining the walls around them.

Jean glared at his hands again. Sasha’s screams on top of Connie’s on top of Tom’s on top of Armin’s broken wails for Eren were all he could think about, and _goddamnit_ , if this was the life he was signing up for, then what kind of life was it?

“I don’t think I’m cut out to be a leader,” he said finally, echoing Marco’s shouts from the rooftop no more than a couple of hours before. Marco made a soft noise of surprise, but Jean wouldn’t look up, _couldn’t_ look up to see the expression on his face. “So don’t… don’t say things like that again.”

Marco made the noise again, only gentler, more understanding. He screwed one gas can closed, set it aside, and attached his hose to the next. When he spoke, it was clear but carefully calculating, the same sincere voice he always used when he knew he was saying something that someone needed to hear.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” he began quietly, “but you’re not a strong person, Jean.”

Jean had half a mind to get mad, chew him out, but something about the moment told him that maybe that wasn’t the point he was trying to make. Either that or he was too tired to fight back. Part of him was even agreeing at that point. He was a pathetic weakling, and even the boy he loved knew it.

Marco had an easy smile on his face, though, and his cheeks were barely blooming red with a nervous flush beneath dark freckles. He wouldn’t make eye contact, looking at his fingers like Jean had been for most of the time they’d been sitting together.

“But that just means that you can relate to how the weak feel,” Marco continued. “You’re good at sizing up situations—isn’t that how you knew immediately what had to be done out there on the rooftops?”

Jean’s breath hitched in his throat. He finally looked fully into Marco’s face right in time for Marco to turn to him as well: bright smile in place, eyes twinkling, beautiful. It reminded him of a hundred times before, seeing the sunrise in that grin.

“You gave the right orders,” Marco said. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m alive.”

And then he turned and laughed all soft and pretty under his breath like it was no big deal.

Like he hadn’t just shattered Jean’s entire being.

“Marco,” Jean whispered, rough and scratchy in the back of his throat, his words betraying his mind. Fuck, it tumbled out of his mouth before he knew what he was doing, before his unsteady hands could set his gas can aside and inch his body slowly forward so he was leaning into Marco the way he had only done once before, that very morning. His arms curled tight around Marco’s shoulders. He breathed in sweet citrus, breathed out anxiety.

“Jean?” Marco echoed, and his voice wavered uncertainly as his own face inched forward, forward, closer and closer.

Jean meant to thank him. For today. For the night before. For every night and every day for the last three years. He’d meant to say a simple _“thank you, Marco,”_ but it didn’t come out that way.

“I love you,” he said instead. He whispered it into Marco’s neck, close enough to his ear that the very tips of his soft hair tickled his nose.

Marco stiffened in his grip, and Jean’s heart climbed into his throat, but Marco made no motion to remove himself from the embrace. The yellow-orange glow of the torches along the wall silhouetted the right side of his face. It was hard to tell in the light if his shocked expression erred on the side of pleased or frightened.

“You—what?” he whispered like a secret, pulling just barely from the embrace. His eyes shut tight over dark, blown pupils like he was preparing for impact.

Jean loved him. Even if Marco didn’t love him back like that, he would love him anyway, because he was his best friend and his closest ally. Because Marco was home to him in a place that wasn’t home at all.

“Marco, I l—”

“Please don’t,” Marco whispered into the mere inches of air that kept their lips apart. His eyes hadn’t opened yet, lashes still splayed out against the dark flush of his cheeks like charcoal strokes. His breath hitched, calloused hand moving minutely across the flushed skin of Jean’s neck, and his thumb stroked the long angles of his jaw. “Please don’t say it again, please don’t.”

Jean keened into the touch. Their lips nearly brushed again, but they didn’t move. “Marco,” he breathed.

“I’m sorry,” Marco mumbled. His voice had lost the confidence that colored it before, now quiet and broken, on the verge of tears from the sound of it. “I’m sorry, please just let me live in my selfish little fantasy world for a little bit longer. I’m so sorry, Jean.”

“Marco, look at me.”

It was slow, but he did. Marco’s Adam’s apple bobbed faintly with a nervous swallow, his jaw tightened and released, and his eyelids slowly flickered open. Glassy tears were gathered around the waterline. When his eyes met Jean’s, he blinked them back with an unsteady inhale, and they spilled hastily down the sides of his cheeks.

“Marco,” Jean finally breathed between parted lips. “I love you.”

Marco’s pupils shrank into the darkness of his eyes for a moment. His jaw dropped lightly before he shuts it with a muffled _clack_ of his teeth.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it, Jean. I swear if you don’t mean it, I’ll never forgive you.”

“I love you,” Jean said again, clear as daylight. “I meant it when I said you were the best thing that’s ever happened to me, y’know? I love you. Why the hell wouldn’t I mean that?”

How couldn’t he? How could he ever be insincere about falling for the boy with the wide eyes and unfailing faith in him?

“Be-because,” Marco choked. “Because I’ve loved you for so long and if this—a-and that kiss this morning—is the universe’s way of playing a sick joke on me, I don’t know what I’ll do, okay?”

Jean’s heart climbed into his throat.

All that time: Reiner smiling like he knew something he shouldn’t have during Truth or Dare the night before, Marco’s flushed cheeks and tensed jaw, the way his eyes had gone wide and his cheeks dark crimson.

All of that was for _him_? _He_ was the person Marco liked?

“H-how long?” Jean stuttered.

“You offered me your bread that night, and your eyes were so pretty and gold in the light, and I just—” Marco huffed an airy laugh between heaving breaths. His thumb traced that same path, up and down Jean’s jawline. “I’m pretty sure my heart skipped a beat or two.”

That was day _two_. The day they met, officially, for the first time. When Jean was too busy mooning over a girl who wasn’t interested to see what was just past the tip of his nose.

Marco had been in love with Jean for _three whole years_ , and Jean?

Jean was the most oblivious idiot that ever walked within the walls.

“I’m stupid,” he said quietly.

“Just a bit,” Marco agreed, and slowly but surely, the edges of his lips quirked up into the sweet smile that Jean was so goddamned in love with. “God, I was so _obvious_ sometimes, how did you not see it?”

“I-I don’t know,” Jean mumbled. Scenes of Marco squeezing his hand, holding him close to his chest in the infirmary, returning the kiss that morning replayed in his mind and he felt his face flush pleasantly warm. “I’m slow on the uptake.”

And then Marco kissed him. He pulled just far enough to dart forward and press their lips together—messy and terribly angled, but Marco _kissed him_ and it was better than any Truth or Dare kiss or any rushed kiss in the middle of the chaotic road could ever have even hoped to be. Jean held onto him desperately and kissed back. He gripped fistfuls of sleeve and collar until his hands found stability in the material of Marco’s jacket, right over his pounding heart, and they kissed and kissed and kept on kissing until they were both lightheaded and gasping for breath.

Their foreheads tipped together on instinct, heavy breath mingling between their lips.

“Clearly,” said Marco. “I love you. _God_ , I love you.”

Before Jean could respond, they were kissing again, softer, sweeter. This time, Jean tried to commit everything to memory: the feeling of Marco’s full lips pressed to his, the warmth that bloomed in his chest every time he repeated the words _I love you_ in the back of his mind, the way the rest of the world seemed to fade away into background noise so the only thing he could see, think, hear, _feel_ was Marco.

If holding Marco’s hand was like coming home, then kissing him was coming home to a house in the safety of Wall Sina filled with every good memory they had ever had together.

“I love you,” he murmured against Marco’s mouth between pecks. “I love you, _I love you_.”

When he was younger and his mother used to bring out those old storybooks, the ones with the mighty heroes and the scary villains that always ended with the villain defeated and the fair maiden rescued and rushing dramatically into the hero’s arms to profess her undying love, Jean used to imagine how he would say those three words for the first time.

Maybe he’d rescue a princess from a fire-breathing dragon and it would be love at first sight and they would live happily ever after as the benevolent rulers of their kingdom.

Maybe he’d join the Military Police and stumble upon a cute pianist at a bar in the capital city and fall in love with the way her fingers touched the keys, or how her voice cracked when she tried to sing a note just out of her range.

For a while when he was younger, he’d toyed with the idea of telling Mikasa how talented she was and how much he liked her, on the off chance that maybe she would like him back. That maybe they would share a tent on an overnight mission, and late at night, when there were no sounds around them but the crickets singing their evening lullaby, he’d murmur the words into her ear and they’d hold each other through the night.

Whispering it again and again against the curve of Marco’s lips was never a thought he’d entertained, and yet it somehow made all the sense in the world. Falling in love with his best friend, the person who had helped him keep his head in the worst of situations, between years of training exercises and long nights spent side-by-side in their little bunk.

Saying it felt as natural to him as breathing. He loved him. He _loved_ him, and he always would.

“I love you,” he breathed once more, and Marco pressed his mouth to the corner of his smile with the same three words on his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it only took THREE YEARS... goodness


	8. too close to the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELCOME TO THE CHAPTER WHERE THE CANON DIVERGENCE BEGINS  
> it's gonna be a bumpy ride from here to the end of the first arc, folks  
> i actually had to split this chapter in half because it was too long and too many things had to happen, hopefully the ending's not _too_ abrupt
> 
> again, warning for canon-typical violence, and injury i guess?

There was a long time—or maybe not, maybe it was just a few minutes where time slipped slow and thick as mud—where Jean and Marco sat on the crates, thighs pressed close together, and they talked. Neither was quite sure if it was because the brief respite the abnormal titan outside had given them from the war outside was nearing its end or because of what they’d confessed, but they didn’t question it.

They talked about things that didn’t matter and things that did, about each other and their friends and what was going to happen when they got back outside, about when exactly it was that Jean realized he was in love with Marco (and he answered with a bashful look at his dangling feet that he probably always had, slow and building since he woke up in the hospital wing with Marco’s shadow looming over him and for once he felt _safe_ ). When their gas cans were filled, they sat in wait of everyone else finishing, exchanging soft kisses when no one was looking.

Reiner made the call that everyone was ready to head back out minutes later, and Jean mourned the loss of contact. His hands felt useless, like he didn’t remember what he used to do with them before he curled the thick ends of Marco’s hair around his fingers or drew hearts and smiley faces and Military Police shields in his palm with the tip of his index finger. Even rearranging his gear felt wrong, like there were so many better things he could do than buckle straps and reload blades.

“Hey,” Marco said from his side as they slowly meandered back outside with the rest of the soldiers. _His_ hands seemed to be working fine, clutched around the triggers of his 3DMG. “You ready?”

Blinding sunlight hit the both of them in the face the closer they came to the exit out of the building. Outside, the Rogue Titan—or whatever the hell it was they’d all been calling the giant, raging bastard—rampaged on, gnashing its exposed teeth as it ripped into another with sharp, claw-like fingers. It howled an echoing cry into the open air as the steaming body of the other titan slammed to the ground not a block away from the HQ building, and the whole street trembled with every stomp of its enormous feet.

“Not at all,” Jean admitted under his breath. His throat bobbed with a heavy swallow as the first groups of trainees started to evacuate in the steaming wake of the Rogue Titan.

He heard the sound of Marco sheathing his blades, but he didn’t notice that they were put away until calloused hands gently framed his face.

“Neither am I,” Marco said softly. His lips barely touched Jean’s, a ghost of a kiss. “Together?”

Jean nodded almost imperceptibly, steeling his expression all the while. Dewy, love-struck eyes weren’t going to do him any favors when it came to fleeing from a bunch of brainless titans and the one rabid one they’d somehow put their trust in.

“Hey,” he murmured against Marco’s lips. “Just… just in case anything happens when we’re retreating, I, um. Really, really love you.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Marco assured him. His lips pressed softly against the very corner of Jean’s mouth, and he punctuated it with a smile that was just south of confident.

Jean let himself be held, just for a moment. Marco’s arms around him, mouth to his temple, heart thrumming beneath his jacket, where Jean could still feel the folded sketchbook page crinkling in his pocket. He breathed deep, steadying inhalations and only let his hardened expression fade for long enough for Marco to whisper _“I really, really love you too”_ against his skin.

When they parted, the Rogue Titan let out a guttural, carnal scream that was too strained, too _human_ to signify anything but trouble. The footfall around them grew louder, cables being shot into rooftops from all directions to escape the impending damage.

“Reiner, Annie!” Jean shouted, turning from Marco’s embrace to look at the blonds standing just a few feet away. Bertholdt loomed tall behind them, and all three were staring with indecipherable expressions into the distance. They turned their eyes to him after a moment, and he asked, voice wavering, “What the fuck’s going on?”

“Don’t know for sure,” Reiner answered after a moment. He pointed to one of the few intact buildings in the surrounding area. “Armin just followed Mikasa onto that rooftop.”

“And?”

“And we should follow suit,” Annie answered for him. Her expression didn’t shift one bit, but her eyes kept flicking back and forth between the rooftop and further back, where the Rogue Titan was still making mangled, shrieking noises. Whatever the look on her face was, it sure as hell wasn’t anywhere in the realm of pleased. “Who knows what’s going on out there.”

And then she was gone without another word, Reiner and Bertholdt following hot on her heels with twin expressions of wonder and something else as she scaled the side of the building in one shot of her gear up the crumbling wall.

When Jean reached the rooftop moments later, it was hard to make out exactly what was unfolding before his eyes.

Mikasa and Armin were standing on the highest point of the sloping roof—his hands were fisted tight in her jacket, one of hers protectively clutched between his shoulder blades. He could only see the backs of their heads as they stared off of the edge of the building, but going off of body language alone, their faces couldn’t have been too dissimilar to his own, paled and scared.

Mikasa barely shifted when Marco’s feet landed heavily on the broken roof tiles, but Jean caught the telltale stiffening of her hand that made the emblem stitched onto the back of Armin’s jacket wrinkle around her scratched fingers. She was scared. She didn’t show it often, but after three years, it wasn’t as difficult as it used to be to make out the signs. Armin seemed to notice it too—of course he did—because he shifted that much closer to her side.

“That titan,” she said, barely loud enough for the rest of them to barely pick it up.

Armin followed her gaze, bangs falling into his eyes as they widened in recognition. “Cannibalism?” he questioned softly. “Can it not regenerate itself?”

Jean had to step forward to see what they were talking about, but once he did, he immediately wished he hadn’t.

Beyond their gaze, the titan was twitching and seizing, its head twisted in impossible directions while its eyes glowed the same eerie green, but that wasn’t what made his stomach churn the most.

No, that would be the fact that the Rogue Titan was surrounded by what had to be ten other titans, each of them latched onto its body with distorted limbs, their yellowed teeth ripping its flesh off of its bones by the mouthful like it was some kind of giant human instead of their own kind. Its ribs were exposed between gaps of torn flesh, thick tendons beneath writhing with every erratic twitch, jaw nearly unhinged with the intensity it was wailing at.

“I don’t understand,” Mikasa said. Her voice wavered more than she’d let on before, and Jean watched as her hand scrabbled even more across the planes of Armin’s back before he shifted so she could grab hold of his arm. “I thought if we could solve the mystery of that titan, we’d be one step closer to overcoming everything.”

Almost in sync, Marco sidled up to Jean’s side and threaded their fingers together, and he squeezed as tightly as he could.

“I agree,” said a deep voice that belonged to neither of the two in front of Jean’s eyes. The decisiveness in Reiner’s tone caught Jean off guard; he’d been as silent as the rest of them the entire time.

Reiner took a heavy step across the roof tiles, out of the makeshift huddle that he, Bertholdt, and Annie had formed themselves into. Annie stared at him with a stony, blank face; Bertholdt gazed further behind, too transfixed by the Rogue Titan’s dying wails. Jean stared at the three of them in disbelief.

“If he gets eaten, we won’t learn a thing,” Reiner said, to Mikasa’s shock. “If we kill the ones around him, he’s got a fighting chance.”

“Are you _insane_?” Jean finally managed as he tore his eyes away from the wreckage. Mikasa and Armin rounded in on him; suddenly Reiner, Bert, and Annie were at their side as well. Jean felt the anger rising in him like Eren himself had taken hold of him from beyond the grave and shaken it into him himself. “We can finally get the hell out of here and you want to _save_ some titan that’s probably just gonna turn right around and eat us?”

Annie’s eyes flicked to him, unamused as ever. “What if it’s able to help us? Wouldn’t that be a better weapon than any cannon could ever be?”

“ _Help us?_ ” Jean fired back, shrill. Annie Leonhardt had never said more than five words strung together in his presence, and yet he’d known for three years not to mess with her on looks alone. Now, with all of their lives on the line and Annie’s priorities somewhere lost in the void, all prior reservations were tossed aside. Free hand fisted around one trigger of his gear, Jean seethed, “Are you _serious_?”

“Do we look like we’re in any position to be turning down help?” Annie spat. Her eyes flashed dangerously between Reiner and Bertholdt for backup.

Bertholdt nodded solemnly at her, but Reiner was the one who spoke. “He helped us back in the HQ building. We could use him as a temporarily ally.”

“Ally?!” Jean roared, finally pulling from Marco’s hand even if he hated it. The boy stayed put behind him, still shocked into silence.

And he should have hung back and made sure he was okay, reassured him in what little time they had before they could retreat that they were going to be safe and alive. Marco was always the stronger of the two of them; thinking more about what he’d said inside made it hit Jean that much harder. He _wasn’t_ a strong person. Marco was so much stronger, always the shoulder Jean had to lean on when he needed to. And he couldn’t even return the favor when Marco was scared stiff.

Any moment could have been their last, and yet Jean still stomped right into Reiner’s personal space, shoved him with as much force as he could shove someone who had four inches and sixty pounds of muscle on him, and shot the hardest look he could muster when his heart was slamming so hard against his chest. Reiner steadied him with a hand planted on either shoulder, forcing him to be still.

Out of the very corner of his eye, Jean watched Armin carefully pull from beneath Mikasa’s arm to approach Marco, put a hand on his shoulder, and give him a reassuring—if broken—smile. The kind of smile that said they were both coping with the loss of someone close to them; that, at least for the moment, they didn’t need to pay attention to the argument unfolding ahead of them or the violence beyond that.

Marco smiled back at Armin, just as halfheartedly, and it ripped a hole right in the middle of Jean’s chest that he couldn’t find it in his damn self to comfort the one person he should have been comforting.

But he was Jean fucking Kirschstein. He was a selfish, vindictive brat. He was angry. He was everything everyone expected him to be in that moment, once again.

So he shoved Reiner again, and immediately regretted it when the loud combination of his own yell and Reiner’s affronted shout attracted the attention of the titans that had been feasting on their rogue friend’s innards.

One by one, each set of soulless eyes turned on them, fingers uncurling from the torn flesh of the Rogue Titan’s cavernous, steaming chest and reaching for their next targets: the seven idiot humans standing on top of an uncovered rooftop just across the road.

Reiner’s hands fell from Jean’s shoulders, and they both stared, shell-shocked, as the titans came roaring right in their direction.

“In- _fucking_ -credible, you two,” Annie murmured under her breath. She turned her head to Mikasa, scanning her expression. “We can take them.”

Mikasa nodded in affirmation. “We can.”

Armin looked at her from his spot next to Marco as everyone else began to mobilize. “Do you think it’s possible to save…?”

The rest of his question was left as open as the grisly mess that was the Rogue Titan’s chest.

“We can try,” Mikasa said, as quietly as she could to be heard above the deafening yowls of the beasts descending. She looked for a moment like she might move closer to him, but she stopped herself before she could do anything, instead giving Armin the softest hint of an apologetic smile. He returned it just as gently, snagging her sleeve between two outstretched fingers to brush them gently across her wrist.

“You coming, Jean?” Mikasa bit over her shoulder.

Jean stared at his hands, tensed around his triggers. He stared at Marco, glassy-eyed next to Armin.

“Give me a second,” he managed. “Um. Armin, can I—?”

“Go on,” Armin said before Jean could even finish. They exchanged feeble nods, and Armin tightened the strap across his chest before he hesitantly followed Mikasa to the edge of the rooftop.

There wasn’t much that could be said about Marco’s state. Tears cut wet tracks in the dirt and blood on his cheeks, and sunken, grey circles replaced the usual gleam in his eyes. He wasn’t moving, other than the tremble of his shoulders with each heaving breath. He hadn’t spoken since they were on the ground, and Jean longed for the whisper of _“I really, really love you too”_ against his skin once more.

“Marco,” he said, soft. “I-I’m sorry, I just—” Should have been there for you. Should have consoled you. Shouldn’t have put all of our lives in danger by being such a fucking asshole.

Marco cut him off, shaking hand on Jean’s shoulder. He didn’t look confident as much as he did frightened, numb.

He didn’t even try to meet Jean’s eyes when he murmured, “I told you to go be a hero before, didn’t I?”

The hand nudged his shoulder, and he followed Marco’s gaze to Mikasa and Annie, already preparing themselves to leap off of the rooftop.

“I’ll be behind you,” Marco said, nudging again.

Stumbling forward, Jean’s breath hitched in his throat. All he wanted to do was take Marco and flee to safety, but his feet betrayed him. Under no will of his own, he started forward, tossing a quick _“I love you”_ over his shoulder.

He didn’t hear the response before his walking turned to running, his legs nearly giving out beneath him as he readied his equipment, worked himself up to a sprint, and kicked off the edge of the building, into the line of mangled, drooling titans.

 

* * *

 

There used to be something special about swinging in midair from 3DMG that made Jean love every drag and pull of the leather strapped across his body. It was like being unstoppable and free, whipping between the trees of the forest on the hunt for wooden dummies, trailed by Sasha and Connie, cackling into the wind. The Jean of the past loved it. He saw himself doing it for the rest of his life.

It was a completely different feeling, sailing over the city he once called home while it fell to ruins beneath his suspended feet. There was nothing freeing about watching the streets he used to know by heart crumble beneath the impact of falling titan carcasses; no excitement in hearing their ear-splitting cries in place of Connie and Sasha’s childish banter. He didn’t smile the way he did when he caught a decoy when his blades carved a steaming, bloody X into the fleshy neck of one of the smaller titans. All he felt was sick.

Jean clattered back down to the tiled roof with a cry of pain when the last titan fell. His right ankle twisted beneath him, rolling too hard under the rest of his body, and he grappled for it with lame hands before he felt someone else brace it for him.

When his breathing evened again, Jean saw not the warm, freckled brown of Marco’s hands, but the scarred pale of Mikasa’s holding it firmly in place.

“Are you okay,” her stern voice barked, more of a command than a question. She barely waited for his weak nod before she held his booted foot in front of her, very carefully twisting it in her palms until he _wailed_ with agony like she was ripping it right off of his leg herself.

“It’s sprained, not quite broken yet,” Mikasa said. “Keep off it until we retreat. There should be medics behind the next wall.”

It took all of Jean’s strength to huff out the few words that managed to make it to his mouth from his confused, overloaded mind. “When—is—that going—to be?”

Mikasa rolled her eyes. “Soon. The titan got free. We need to see if it’s going to regenerate or not.”

“And where’s—?”

Another eye roll. Mikasa propped his injured leg on her lap to keep him from moving it. “Marco’s on the next rooftop, just fine. You’re lucky he made you go when he did.”

“Why,” Jean choked around a gasp of breath. A bit too quickly, shifting his leg so he winced with pain, he pushed his upper body to lean on his elbows, and he caught sight of what Mikasa was talking about.

The rooftop they had been standing on just minutes before was nothing more than smashed bricks and caving foundation beneath the Rogue Titan’s mangled, convulsing body.

“It’s free, but it’s unsteady. It fell when it tried to stand up,” Mikasa said flatly, almost as if she was forcing the emotions not to show themselves. Jean could see the tension swimming behind her grey eyes though. “It’s almost like it’s scared, or pissed off.”

“A titan with emotions,” Jean deadpanned at her.

“Shut up,” Mikasa snapped, cheeks reddening. “I’m just going off of what it looked like.”

They fell into silence after that, Mikasa keeping a close watch on the titan as it struggled against the building’s ruins and Jean searching as desperately for Marco as he could without jostling his ankle too much from its perch atop Mikasa’s folded knees. He could see her, too, occasionally craning her neck to see through the cloud of dust and rubble that separated their rooftop from the next. Probably for Armin, maybe Annie, maybe something else.

Anyone who hadn’t spent half of their training years staring longingly at her face from afar may not have noticed that her eyes were too shiny, too wet-looking for her hard expression, but Jean had, and he kept quiet the sudden pang of loss he felt for her as the ash began to clear and the only people on the other building were the ones they’d started off with.

No messy hair, no wild green eyes, no perpetually miffed expression.

There was, however, a pair of impossibly wide brown eyes beneath sleek, dark hair, and Jean’s heart both sped and settled as he watched Marco scramble to the very edge of the rooftop to catch a glimpse of them.

“You’re okay,” he could barely hear whispered over the sounds of crumbling foundation across the road. “You’re okay, oh my god, you’re okay.”

Jean watched as Marco balanced himself on the very edge of the roof tiles before he leapt across the divide and his 3DMG hooks caught the edge of the chimney just feet behind himself and Mikasa.

“He’s okay, right?” Marco asked Mikasa, rushing to their side.

“He will be,” she replied. “With some medical attention.”

“Is it—”

“His ankle is probably sprained again,” Mikasa said with the practiced ease of someone who’d been patching up Armin and Eren’s wounds for most of her life—mostly Armin’s, because Eren was seemingly impervious to danger.

Or he had been, at least.

“Make sure he stays off it,” she instructed, gently as she could shifting Jean’s legs from her lap and onto Marco’s next to hers. She stood to stretch once they’d settled, and she looked into the distance at Armin watching her from the next building over. “You’ll have to carry him when we retreat, can you do that?”

“I can.”

Mikasa nodded. “I’m going to check on Armin. Don’t be too far behind; we should all stick to one rooftop in case…”

Her words trailed off as the Rogue Titan thrashed once more in the wreckage around it.

“Gotcha,” Marco said, and Mikasa was off again.

With her gone, Marco pushed the sweat-matted hair from Jean’s forehead, propping his head up with one hand to ease the tension in his neck. Jean followed along with any movements, too exhausted to properly sort out if he was having a fever dream or not.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Marco whispered, his thumb running up and down the back of Jean’s neck. “We’ll get you help soon, sweetheart.”

 _Sweetheart_. Had it been any other situation, he may have blushed and sputtered something embarrassing, but Jean only keened into the touch and tried to steady his breathing.

The unfairness of their situation clawed its way up his throat like thick bile. Weren’t young lovers supposed to spend their first moments of togetherness in a hazy sort of bliss, so tightly wound around each other that the outside world didn’t matter? They were supposed to have roses and soft touches and quiet murmurs of sweet love—the red on their cheeks was supposed to be the glowing hue of a blush, not splattered blood slowly drying to a sickly brown.

“S’okay, just breathe, it’ll be over soon,” Marco’s murmuring voice assured Jean, broken as it may have been. “You feel up to switching rooftops?”

If nothing else, he had Marco’s unending care; that much felt as it should.

Jean nodded, weak and feeble. He winced when Marco placed an arm beneath his legs to lift him up, but he buried his face into his neck all the same, holding tight.

“Too nice to me,” Jean mumbled. “Too nice to such an asshole.”

“Not an asshole,” Marco said. He walked as carefully as he could to the edge of the roof, keeping Jean steady in his arms. “Just a frustrated kid. Like the rest of us.”

“You were terrified and I ignored you.” He pressed his face to Marco’s collarbone, feeling it shift beneath his shirt with every step. “Fuckin’ fought with Reiner while you were scared stiff.”

“I just needed a kick in the pants. Fighting a bunch of titans gave it to me,” Marco assured him. A phantom of a kiss was pressed to the crown of his head. “Hold on tight, okay? We’re jumping in three, two, one…”

The sound of 3DMG hooks catching the tiles of the next roof shot through the air, and Jean braced himself for another impact. The tiles crashed upon their landing, but Marco remained steady until he could carefully sit Jean in the sill of an opened dormer window.

“How’s your ankle?” he implored.

“S’been better, s’been worse,” Jean managed, remembering the first time he’d injured it and ended up in the infirmary for two days before they’d even order him to bed rest in the cabin. It was hard to tell which was worse: this time or then. Without the addition of sedatives and a dusk-lit bed to watch Marco from, he was inclined to say this time.

He was beginning to wake up bit by bit as the breeze hit him in full, though, enough that he could tell that Mikasa and Armin were watching him from beneath the eves of the next window over. He called out to them, voice scratchy in his throat, “When are we evacuating?”

The sooner they left, he figured, the better chance he had at getting his ankle fixed up before he got shipped off to Military Police training. If he ever would.

“Soon,” Armin answered. “We’ll go in a few minutes, I’m sorry. I just—I figured we spent all that time saving the titan, I didn’t want it to be all for nothing if we just left without seeing if he’d regenerate. B-but if your ankle is injured too badly, w-we can—”

“I’ll be fine for a little while longer,” Jean cut him off. “Just… not _too_ long, yeah?”

Armin smiled like he was pleasantly surprised. “No, not at all.”

They sat in wait of any developments, and however brief, the bit of time sitting in that windowsill—tense as it was while they watched the titan across the street thrash and moan—gave Jean time to breathe. The more he focused on the even inhale-exhale of his breath, in time with Marco’s thumb tracing endless patterns on the back of his hand, the less his ankle throbbed inside of his boot.

He thanked whatever deity—Maria, Rose, Sina, any other name the Wallists who used to preach out in the streets would rattle off at who-knows-when in the morning—for the boy at his side. He knew it would never be enough to repay him, but Jean still offered enough space in the sill for Marco to sit with him, and though Marco protested at first, he finally accepted when Jean wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“I don’t need it; you do,” Marco objected, even as Jean closed the gap between their bodies to lean against him.

“I’m being nice to you,” was Jean’s reply as he snaked an arm around the narrow line of Marco’s waist, half to hold him closer and half for extra support to lean his tired weight on. “Accept it, damn it.”

Marco’s lips curled into as much of a smile as was possible in the moment before they tipped to press against the undoubtedly sweaty, disgusting hairline that laid to perch on his shoulder.

“Too nice to me,” Marco parroted. “Love y—”

A crackling howl cut through the air, before Marco could finish his thought, and right before their very eyes, they watched with shock and horror as the titan’s ribs began to reanimate themselves out of the steam billowing from its chest. They appeared to stretch like rubber, one by one growing closer and closer together from each side until they fused in the middle, each its own solid bone.

“No way,” Armin whispered to nobody in particular. It hung stale in the air as his face paled. “Is regeneration usually this quick once it’s started?”

Reiner descended from somewhere further up the roof, arms crossed over his chest with something almost prideful on his face. “Not always,” he said. “I, uh, mean I saw a few earlier today that regenerated fast, but not quite as fast as him.”

The titan howled as muscle and skin crept over barren bone. The gaps in flesh poured less and less steam until there were no more spaces between flesh to come out of. It began to stagger forward on unsteady legs, hulking and thunderous, though each step wavered and wobbled more like a newborn fawn struggling to find its footing than a 15 meter titan that just flattened half a neighborhood.

“What’s the plan?” Mikasa asked, turning to Armin, presumably to keep her eyes off of the struggling titan. Jean held tighter to Marco at the thought of standing up again; he was stable enough sitting in the windowsill, but it would take a miracle they didn’t have—or a serious burst of energy—to get him on his bad leg again.

Armin blanched at the question. He stared at Mikasa for a long moment, her gaze unwavering and encouraging while the gears visibly turned in his head.

“Um,” he struggled. “We… we don’t know if it’s responding to us…”

He gave a cursory glance around the rooftop at all of the faces watching him impassively. Mikasa touched his shoulder and he nodded.

“B-but we can test that. There’s enough of a pathway cleared back to the wall that we should be able to retreat with little interference, provided we don’t have any run-ins with abnormal titans.” Armin’s breath hitched, and Jean could still hear his broken sobs on the rooftop after the last run-in with an abnormal he’d had echoing fresh in his mind. “If it follows us, w-we turn it over to the hands of the Survey Corps; they can investigate what happened to make it help us. If it doesn’t…”

He cast an almost mournful look at the titan as it stood, quivering, in the street. Its glowing green eyes locked onto him while it stumbled, and Armin’s throat bobbed with a heavy swallow.

“…Then it helped us all it could, and that’s that. We go on without it.”

Reiner’s brows furrowed. He exchanged silent glances with Annie and Bertholdt, then his eyes trailed back to Armin. “There’s no way you can think of persuading him to come with us if he doesn’t on his own?”

“Not without risking ourselves too badly. Jean’s already injured, Marco’s going to have enough on his plate carrying him to the wall, there’s no way I’m fast enough... I’m confident that the three of you and Mikasa are quick, but the risk of it surprising us again by attacking isn’t something I want to put on your shoulders.”

Another glance, and Reiner sighed. “This from Mr. ‘No Risk, No Reward’?”

Mikasa cut in, fixing Reiner with a harsh glare that hardly backed him down. “Which is exactly why you should listen when he says the risk is too big,” she gritted. “There’s a difference between putting your neck on the line and your head on the executioner’s block.”

Jean watched the argument, quiet from his perch. Marco’s hand traveled lazy circles up his spine while he listened intently, dark eyes focused and honed in on every minute movement. When all was decided—Marco, along with Jean, Mikasa, and Armin would retreat as planned; Reiner, Annie, and Bertholdt would coax the titan along if it wouldn’t go itself, even against Armin’s wishes—he jostled Jean just enough to sweep him off of the windowsill and into his arms once more to join the crowd.


	9. icarus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **please remember the warning tags for this chapter** , because we're going to be dealing with several of them (namely the last two)
> 
> i had a lot of difficulty with this chapter (actions! violence! emotions! words! why am i writing fics instead of screenplays), so any feedback would be both super helpful and super appreciated

“I don’t like this,” Armin murmured hesitantly while Reiner, Annie, and Bertholdt slunk down to the edge of the roof before leaping across the road to what was left of the previous building’s foundation.

“There’s reckless, and then there’s idiotic, but what are we gonna do about it,” Mikasa mumbled back, monotone. She was doing it again, hiding her grief behind a mask. Everyone knew _reckless_ was practically code for _Eren Jaeger_ at that point. Armin, above all, did, and he threaded his fingers through hers wordlessly to keep her mind off of it.

“How are you holding up, Jean?”

Jean lolled his head back on Marco’s shoulder, eyes half-lidded and the barest hint of a sarcastic smirk on his face. “Well, I’m not dead.”

Armin’s lips quirked, only just. “Nice to know. The Military Police better give you a break for a little while over that ankle.”

“I’ll let them know the future commander of the Survey Corps told them to let me fucking sleep,” Jean snorted. He caught a rare fraction of a smile from Mikasa, and she buffed him on the bicep.

“You ready to go, Marco?” she asked. He didn’t speak, too focused, but nodded all the same, and Mikasa faced the broken building across the way. “Annie, are you guys ready?”

Annie didn’t speak either, but a raised blade told Mikasa all she needed to know.

“Then one… two…”

Nobody waited for three before six gears’ worth of cables shot off at once, and the only sound that filled Jean’s ears otherwise was the whipping of wind as he tried in vain to cover them with what he could grab of Marco’s jacket so the thrashing didn’t assault his eardrums.

Mikasa found a stable rooftop to plan out the rest of their route, and he took the momentary respite to shift in Marco’s arms, bury at least one ear against the crook of his neck for cover, and hook his chin over a broad shoulder.

The wind died down to a chilled breeze that drifted through the air, still heavy from the morning’s rainfall, even if the sun had fast peered its way out from behind the clouds while they had been cooped up in the HQ building. It cooled the sweat on Jean’s brow so it dried in a stiff film across his forehead, and he closed his eyes to the sounds of Marco, Mikasa, and Armin speaking in quick, hushed tones under the cover of a chimney.

“Have you seen them since we left?”  
“Maybe they took a different path.”

“Wouldn’t we be able to see it still? It’s taller than any building left standing.”

“Could it have fallen again?”

“Might have. We should wait a few minutes to see if they show up again.”

Marco’s chest rumbled beneath Jean’s with every murmur, and Jean lifted his head to watch the nervous lift of his eyebrows, the way he would definitely be scratching his nose had he not been carrying 140 pounds of dead weight in his arms. He noticed Jean moving and gave him an anxious fraction of a smile.

“Hey,” Marco whispered, close enough to Jean’s lips that he could bridge the gap again if there weren’t two other sets of eyes watching them. “S’okay, we’ll start up again soon. You don’t have to move.”

And there came the burst of energy that he needed.

Jean shook his head, carefully pushing off Marco’s chest with a wriggle that freed his good leg enough to move on its own. Marco may have been strong, but carrying a boy not all that much smaller than himself across an entire town after a full morning of fighting and fleeing from titans was asking for disaster. Jean couldn’t have disaster. He couldn’t lose Marco right before they were supposed to get out of this place together. They’d waited too damn long to throw everything they’d worked for away over a two-year-old ankle injury that would heal with time anyway.

So he slowly crawled down from his perch against Marco’s chest, careful to land on one foot only, and he braced himself against the chimney.

“I can make it to the wall,” he said stubbornly. “I’ll just land on my left foot if I have to. If that thing’s gone rogue again, I’m not letting the two of us get eaten because I can’t suck it the hell up for five minutes.”

Marco opened his mouth to protest, but it died on his lips, even if he did stare longer than necessary at Jean’s right foot, held suspended in the air beneath where his hip leaned heavily on the sturdy brick of the chimney.

Mikasa scoffed. Gone was the smile that had shined so bright when she’d socked him on the shoulder not minutes ago; in its place, an unamused glower pinched her features.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she bit. “What happens if you hurt the left foot then? And we don’t have time to stop so someone else can pick you up?”

“Then I won’t hurt it,” he gritted back.

“We all said we wouldn’t do things today. You aren’t going to break your other ankle the same way I wasn’t going to let Eren out of my sight—”

She stopped. Silence. Her jaw hung open just enough for a shaky huff of breath to escape her lips.

She’d been doing so well at hiding it too.

“Mikasa,” Jean tried. “I’m not h—”

Mikasa’s jaw snapped shut, and even Armin’s touch over the emblem across her shoulder blades didn’t wipe the lost look on her face as tears pooled in her eyes.

“Forget it,” she murmured, thick with emotion. “Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Jean opened his mouth to say something: an explanation, or whatever he could muster of an apology, whether or not he was actually sorry. But Mikasa turned her back so she could see Armin and Armin only, and he pushed onto his toes to wrap his arms around her shoulders and let his lips barely touch the sliver of exposed skin between her scarf and jawline.

Mikasa wasn’t Sasha; she didn’t wear her emotions on her sleeve. Jean couldn’t cry his insecurities all over her and fix everything between them. He couldn’t try to take the blame for the titan that killed Eren the way he’d tried to for the one that attacked Sasha. Things didn’t work that way for Mikasa. She needed truth, and she needed revenge, and Jean wouldn’t blame her, even if the pit of guilt in his stomach opened up that much more watching her cling tight to Armin as barely-there hiccups wracked her body.

And so he left her to her private moment, and instead turned his own attention to Marco, looming protectively over his side. He could see it in the glint of his eyes that Marco agreed with Mikasa, with good reason—she _was_ ranked as the top trainee, after all. Hell, part of Jean wanted to agree with her too, but a larger part remembered the gunfire shot of guilt in his chest when he’d been a sitting duck when Connie and Sasha were in danger and was unwilling to let it happen again.

“You’re sure?” was all Marco said, and he reluctantly nodded when Jean confirmed.

“I’m not gonna let myself be responsible for anything else today.”

“Jean, you know what happened with Sasha and Connie wasn’t your fault.”

“Marco.” Jean used the one hand not clenched tight around the brick of the chimney to touch the boy’s cheek, warm and dusted with grime beneath his fingers. “You told me to be the hero.”

Marco laughed humorlessly, the softest puff of air from his nostrils. “Using it against me, huh.”

Jean smiled back, faintly. “You used it against me first.”

There was peace for a moment, holding his palm against the curve of Marco’s cheek in silence, feeling each muscle of the tentative smile beneath his fingers shift. They both needed it desperately—Jean could see the shadows rimming Marco’s lower eyelids, painting them in stark greys, as much as he tried to hide it. His own leg wasn’t feeling all too great either, still barely lifted beneath him, but, he figured, the time spent on the rooftop waiting for any sign of Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie, or the titan they’d gone to prod on let him regain just enough of the energy he’d need to get himself back to the wall.

But, as the day had already proven time and time again, peace couldn’t last long. It never did.

Jean was the first to see Annie emerge from below an awning three buildings down, alone. No sign of Reiner or Bertholdt, certainly no sign of the titan.

“Annie?” he called as she sprinted closer. The roof tiles shifted behind him as Mikasa turned, finally, at the name. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Run,” was all Annie said as she leapt the gap between buildings. Jean’s eyes flicked from Marco to Mikasa to Armin, and then back. Annie was still running, close enough that he could hear her heavy breathing when she shouted again, “I said run, goddamnit!”

Mikasa shouted something at her, something about what they were supposed to be running from, but it was nothing but white noise as Jean gazed through the hazy air behind her.

The Rogue Titan had more than managed to recover its shaky legs—no, it _bolted_ from behind the crumbling clock tower into his line of vision, screaming so loud that the noise stung the already-sensitive drums of Jean’s ears with every lingering second the bellows echoed throughout the streets.

Annie reached them at the same time Reiner and Bertholdt reemerged on the rooftops, struggling to match the titan’s pace with every burst of steam from their gear. He could hear them shouting directions at each other— _“this way?”_ and _“no, go to that side, he’s too close!”_ —between blasts.

“Can you not hear?” she demanded. She edged dangerously close to Mikasa, fists balled at her sides. The top of her head barely reached Mikasa’s chin; still, she pushed forward like she was six feet tall. “Do you not want to live? That thing’s gone berserk, you need to get the hell out of here.”

Mikasa stood still as the walls surrounding them—cracked as her exterior may have been, it would take a catastrophe to move her. “It’s never touched us before,” she gritted out. “We’ll continue with the plan: just get it to the wall.”

“Does that look like the gentle giant you’re still trying to pretend it is?” Annie snapped, gesturing at the yowling titan as its flailing fist collided with the side of what was once a library. She turned to Armin, who still had a firm grip of Mikasa’s arm. “You’re the logical one; tell her.”

“I-I mean, you both have good points?” Armin fidgeted, chewing his lip while staring between both girls looking so fervently at him. “But Annie, do you know why it’s being so aggressive now?”

“Hell if I know,” she grumbled. “We called it rogue for a reason.”

But Jean’s silence afforded him one thing: he could watch the titan as it fled alongside Reiner and Bertholdt. He could see Annie’s explanation fall apart before his eyes.

The titan wasn’t angry because it was rogue; the titan was angry because every time the boys flanking it on either side crossed its back, their sharp blades sliced angry, steaming gashes into its regenerated flesh.

He didn’t know how he hadn’t seen it before: Reiner and Bertholdt weren’t giving each other directions where to go, they were telling each other where to cut the titan to make it move faster and angrier. Where they’d been trusted to nudge the titan along, they were _forcing_ it, angering it, and each wild thrash of its arms wasn’t out of misplaced anger, it was _pain_.

“Just go,” Annie was starting to beg as every set of eyes on that rooftop trained on the boys chopping at the closest thing humanity had to answers. “Retreat and we’ll deal with our shit. We’ll get it to the wall alive. We can’t—” Her breathing turned ragged. “We can’t let it die. You were right.”

Mikasa pushed past her, expression dead set on the titan looming ever closer. Even Armin detached himself from her arm as her heavy footfall sounded across the rooftop.

“We’ll wait,” she said. “Jean, if you’re too hurt, you and Marco can head back, but I’m not moving a _damn_ muscle until those two stop for long enough for the titan to calm itself.”

“I’m not too hurt,” Jean said on instinct, even if thoughts of salve and bandages were tempting him. He couldn’t leave without seeing this through to the end.

Mikasa’s glare was still severe, but she didn’t protest, even if Annie was staring at him like he’d sprouted a second head that particularly offended her.

Annie grit her teeth, and her eyes slipped tightly closed for just long enough to think.

She opened them and aimed a grimace at Mikasa. “Fine.”

 

* * *

It didn’t take long for Reiner and Bertholdt to wrangle the titan close to where they stood, even if it earned them a good chewing out from a calculated but irate Mikasa and a slightly more subdued Armin. They apologized well enough, but there was something behind their eyes that didn’t look sorry at all. There was almost _pride_ in the look Reiner cast Annie’s way as Mikasa left them alone.

There wasn’t much time to dwell on something as small as a suspicious glance though; not when the streets were filled with the earsplitting cries of an angry titan. It had been stopped far enough away that they were out of its crushing reach, but close enough that its darting gaze was still unnervingly close, enough to see the bloodshot veins stemming from the edges of its eyes, even as it stood in an enraged stupor, screaming as the last of the slice wounds up and down its arms and shoulders healed.

There was a certain kind of silence that came along with impending danger. It was the thickest kind of silence Jean knew, in the few times he’d experienced it—once before he’d hit a tree dead on, and once muffled beneath his and Marco’s quiet conversation just that morning, before it had descended into chaos. It wasn’t a peaceful silence that Jean could bask in like he had so many before. Too uncomfortable with the sensation, like the viscosity of seven lumps rising in seven throats was palpable in the air, like he could feel the individual tingles from each spine of each person around him that weren’t stemming from the late afternoon breeze. It was a silence that was made of waiting, and waiting, and knowing that once the waiting was finally over, that everything was going to go straight to hell, but waiting all the same.

And when the waiting did end—both dreaded and welcomed, if only to terminate the suffocating silence that wound around his neck just tightly enough to threaten to choke without actually pulling the noose—go to hell it did.

The earth quaked beneath their feet before anything else, shingles from the rooftop clattering against each other like shutters slamming in the wind, like bones cracking against the unforgiving ground. A sound not unfamiliar, but no less foreboding. It knocked Jean’s clenched fingers off of the brick chimney with a start, turning his head so he could properly _watch_ it all go to hell.

He barely felt Marco’s hand close around his limp forearm over the terror that flooded every vein, every orifice of his body.

Whatever it was that Reiner and Bertholdt had done to it, however badly they’d harmed the thing, the titan looked on the verge of _murderous_ , but it wasn’t the garden variety emotionless murder that every other titan they’d encountered throughout the day. The steam pouring from its mouth and nose, the sharpness of its searing eyes, the way its fists clenched, knuckles cracked—the thing was _losing it_ with rage. Almost like… revenge.

In three years of lessons, they were taught so much about the titans that they could scarcely remember it all, but never about revenge. Revenge wasn’t a titan thing, borne of a distinctively human brand of selfish rage, and every instructor had ingrained the same idea into their heads: titans weren’t human, they were something darker and more dangerous, and that was why they had to get rid of them.

So there was no conceivable way that this titan was out for revenge, and _yet_ …

And yet it was staring at the seven of them with those eerily bloodshot black-and-green eyes like it was losing its goddamn _mind_ not fighting back.

When the first clenched fist threatened to smash a hole clean into the side of the building, Jean was already tackling Marco out of the way with all of the strength he could muster in his weak body. Marco hit the shingles with a yell, just barely clearing the titan’s fingers by inches.

His labored, petrified breathing beneath Jean’s palms was enough to snap something in his mind. Who gave a shit about his messed up ankle, who gave a _shit_ about protecting this thing anymore? With another swipe of its gargantuan hand across the rooftop, narrowly missing Annie, who leapt out of reach just in time, this titan was trying to _kill them_.

It wasn’t human. It wasn’t fucking human, and they couldn’t fucking treat it like it was one anymore. It had to go.

Marco managed to stand back up on his own, which Jean was exceedingly grateful for, because one last rushed kiss pushed searingly against his mouth, and Jean mustered every last inch of strength he could find to _tear_ down the length of the building, hot on the heels of the next fallen fist against brick and mortar.

Every time he nearly stumbled over his bum ankle, he thought of Tom, Ruth, Mina, _Eren_. He thought of Annie’s _“run, goddamnit, do you not want to live?”_ and how scared he’d been that morning that he was going to lose his mother, or Marco.

God, _Marco_. Marco, who he was desperately in love with, who he’d never get to have happy memories tied to his first kiss with, who he’d still follow right into the darkness anyway.

Jean’s ankle _cracked_ sickly as he leapt off of the building and let the cables attached to his hips take the pressure instead. He angled his head, just for a second, to see him once more before they didn’t have to worry about the titan anymore, and _god_.

Marco, who was _screaming_ at him to stop what he was doing.

All of them were, waving their arms and shouting things he could hardly hear through the wind whipping in his ears. Jean could only make out the stray phrase— _stop_ and _please_ and _can’t let him go_ —but it might as well have been nothing but stale air to him.

The titan was out for blood. It had to go.

It was a mantra in his head, thrumming between his ears— _it has to go, it has to go, it has to go it has to go it wants to kill you it has to go_ —until the voices below were indistinguishable from the white noise surrounding them.

The titan noticed him drawing closer as it kicked right through a water pump. It stopped dead in its tracks while the stream of water shot up barely knee-height, recalculating its movements. Jean hung in the air, suspended, soaking in the blasts of water, as its eyes focused painstakingly slow on his face.

He shot away before the titan could even move a muscle, off of the next building and further down the street as quickly as possible. Its stomping footsteps rumbled behind him like the gallop of the horses back at camp, only tenfold, louder, angrier. He nearly lost a cable as the titan crushed the wall it was clamped onto with a jab of its elbow. It had almost caught up to him, any lead he’d had before breached by the titan’s impossibly long legs, and as Jean weaved around a flagpole, his mind ran nearly as quickly as the erratic _thud_ in his chest.

The titan wasn’t even beginning to tire the way Jean had been for hours already. It still chased him like it had just begun. It was gaining on him, each step bringing the manic look on its face closer until Jean was running out of places to go—a piece of broken wall the size of a building itself had crushed the pathway out of the street he had been betting on, making it nothing but a dead end.

A stroke of either genius or idiocy, he formulated a hasty plan. If he could kick off of the rubble with enough force (and without losing the ability to use his right leg at all), he could plausibly gain enough momentum in the opposite direction to throw off the titan, if only for a few seconds’ worth of a head start. It was risky, but so was leading this thing that probably wanted to eat him down a dead end.

It took strength that Jean didn’t have to speed up, shooting his cables harder and faster than before. It was a hurt not entirely unlike face planting into a tree—but even _worse_ , because this time he had to fight with every bit of his body to hold onto the consciousness he so desperately wanted to let go of. He could feel the telltale wetness coming up from his right foot—the last crack of his ankle had to have broken the skin, by the crimson slowly seeping through worn cracks in his boot.

He couldn’t stop, though, and as the broken piece of the wall loomed ever closer, the decision was made: he had to flip off of the damned thing even if it took his whole fucking leg with it. He wasn’t going to let himself die in a broken street while half of his friends watched.

A scream borne of pure, agonizing instinct ripped itself from his throat as he kicked his protesting legs out from beneath him. He watched as the blood spewed out of his shoe from the force, whipped back by the wind and spattering itself across his cheek, the bridge of his nose, down his eyelid. The vision from his left eye was stained in red that he had no time to blink away, the rubble just meters from the bottom of his feet.

Impact came with a crunch louder than before as his right ankle _shattered_ under him, but Jean had to conceal the yell this time, focus on jetting past the titan that was slowly catching on to the blocked-off street. Messy as the backflip was, he cleared it with some difficulty and bitten-back tears, and the next target was right before him.

The titan’s neck was just barely exposed beneath a mop of shaggy hair, but the wind’s persistent blow tossed it aside so the weak spot was fully on display, and Jean’s blades were exposed before he could even think about it.

He’d done this a million times before in training, twice that day alone. He just had to slice the nape, just had to get enough flesh off that it couldn’t regenerate anymore. Pretend it was another wooden decoy in the forest that he’d get meaningless points for if he caught. Pretend it was the titan that attacked Sasha that he’d been too stupid to get himself. Realize that if he didn’t do it, Marco’s life—and Mikasa’s, Armin’s, the rest of theirs—was on the line.

He came as close as he could, as close as he was used to, and brought his blades down against the titan’s neck with all the fury pent-up in his bones. Tears streamed down his cheeks, unable to be controlled anymore, and as the titan wailed with agony, Jean allowed his gear to sink him slowly to the cobbled roads he was so familiar with.

He did it, he thought with hazy, faltering pride as the titan fell forwards and collapsed in a cloud of steaming blood.

He did it. The titan was gone. They were safe. They were going to make it after all.

It repeated in his fuzzy mind as he slipped in and out of consciousness. _Look at me, Marco. I saved us. We’re going to live together, forever, safe, don’t you see? We made it, baby…_

The footsteps on the ground didn’t register around the haze in his head, only that he was alone, and then he wasn’t. He was slumped against the wall, and then two pairs of hands were dragging him up by the biceps.

The first thing that seeped into his consciousness was his name, not shouted but said close enough, harsh enough that he had no choice but to listen. His heavy-lidded eyes slipped open just enough to see Reiner and Bertholdt’s arms keeping him braced, off his foot, just as the titan’s steam began to clear.

“What the _fuck_ , Jean,” Reiner hissed, quiet but fierce, against the shell of his ear. “What the fuck was that?”

Jean wasn’t sure he had voice enough to reply with; he only stared ahead, dazed.

The steam cleared enough to make out the shapes of figures behind its thick clouds. Annie, tight body language and folded arms. Armin, on his knees, hands in small fists. Marco, _Marco_ , so tall, so still and frozen. Mikasa, crouched, shoulders shaking, and—

Another figure slumped limply in her arms.

There hadn’t been anybody but them left in town, much less on the street, but… had someone gone back? A trainee, a superior officer looking for their missing subordinates? A civilian?

Jean’s thoughts immediately went to his mother, back and searching for her boy in a panic, and he struggled against the grip on his biceps, crying out at the pain. Reiner and Bertholdt didn’t budge, as much as he thrashed and fought.

“Let me… _go_ ,” he grunted, bucking his entire weight into Bertholdt’s side to no avail. “What’s  _happening_ , I need to—”

“You don’t need to do _anything_ ,” Bertholdt shot back, dark.

“Yes, I _do_ , I need—”

When no amount of fighting worked, Jean stopped trying and mustered all that was left of his broken voice to shout, _“Marco!”_ through the last of the mist.

Marco’s head snapped in his direction. The streets were clear enough now to see his bloodshot eyes, so wide and scared, and the way his folded hands trembled in front of his chest. The way he quietly shook his head at Jean and tore his eyes back to Mikasa.

Mikasa, still holding the figure, a rare wet slick beneath her eyes.

The figure, the _person_ , blood pouring from the back of their neck and staining Mikasa’s uniform crimson.

The figure, with messy brown hair and thick, downturned eyebrows slack with unconsciousness over eyes that were, undoubtedly, wild and green.

Mikasa, holding _Eren Jaeger_ in her trembling arms. Pressing her ear to his chest and her entire world flashing behind grey eyes as she waited.

“M-Mikasa,” Armin murmured. “Mikasa, is he—?”

Mikasa _screamed_ , Eren’s paled body sagged lifelessly between the two of them, and it was answer enough.

The last thing Jean saw before cognizance left him completely were Marco’s eyes, brimming with heavy tears, watching Jean like he was terrified. Of _him_.

And Jean deserved it. He deserved every bit of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [yell at me on tumblr](http://ondistantships.tumblr.com/)
> 
> also! just for reference, we're looking at two more chapters in the first arc, then a brief interlude that will be posted the same day as the second arc (my child, my baby, my heart). i don't know for sure how long the second arc will be, but i do know i'm so excited to start it :>


	10. midnight in the hanging tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first off: thank you for the comments and the tumblr messages <333 i promise i only get a little pleasure out of causing emotional pain
> 
> second off: this is my favorite chapter of the entire story and i'm not sure if that's because it's dialogue-heavy or because 3 characters who will be very important in the second arc finally decide to show their faces *eyeball emoji*

As a child, there were places Jean remembered going. They were the places only children could find wonder in, places that an adult mind could never quite understand. He and his cousins would steal out in the daytime, find them, spend a whole day playing make believe in them.

To the seven-year-old mind, a street corner wasn’t just a place to stand and wait out traffic at; it was the treacherous, guarded moat around an enchanted castle, waiting to be stormed by thieves. Mop handles were 3DMG swords, kitchen spoons were magic wands, fallen twigs were switchblades. Something as mundane as the Military Police headquarters became the castle they devoted their lives to protecting, and each time a grunting officer shooed them away, they bowed and let them through like good knights would.

Things changed as they got older. Wall Maria fell, and suddenly traffic between walls was more regulated. Only could you visit Sina with express purpose, and keeping what was left of a broken family together was only ever purpose enough for holidays.

By the time they saw each other again, a street corner was a street corner, a spoon a spoon, the Military Police HQ building just another place to go about business.

Jean still remembered the last time he visited Sina, months before graduation for the winter holidays. It hadn’t been the same at fourteen as it had at seven, eight, nine. His cousins greeted him with hugs and talked about their lives—their real ones, not the make-believe tales they used to weave until they’d begun to believe it themselves. He’d spent a quiet night on the balcony, watching the world as it truly was sit lazily beyond his grasp when he used to believe he could snatch up the entirety of the walls in the palm of his hand.

Growing up was grim. He’d wanted it so badly before, to be older so he could be a _real_ soldier, not the pretend kind with the wooden stick of a sword. The actual process, seeing things and doing things with real consequences, wasn’t what he’d expected, and he’d spent that night on the balcony nursing the cup of mulled wine his oldest cousin had offered him like a lifeline, wishing there was some way to delay the whole process. Stay a kid forever, because as much as he’d wanted the Military Police perks, he’d almost wanted to stay young with his mother, with Marco, more than that.

If only he’d have known then, that just that—staying young forever—would be exactly what he would get.

 

* * *

 

Darkness enveloped every inch of space around him when Jean woke from the heaviest sleep he could recall. He wasn’t actually sure if he was awake or not, the way the world looked exactly the same whether his eyes were open or closed. The only thing that made him sure he was alive and not dead, lost somewhere in the void, was the throb of pain that radiated from his right ankle.

 _Dead_. The word churned his stomach as the image of Eren Jaeger’s corpse bleeding out in the streets of his childhood crept out from the depths of his mind. The casual reminder that his years-long rival was gone, lost forever, and it was entirely his fault.

Maybe the dimness was his punishment. Maybe he would live the rest of his miserable life unable to see anything but dark, the most fitting retribution for someone who so violently stole the light from someone else’s life.

Mikasa’s scream echoed in his ears, Armin’s quiet sob, the stare Marco had given him that was not one of a boy in love, but a boy terrified, _betrayed_.

He did that. He had to live with it. The rest of his life, he would have to deal with the fallout of everything that led him to this moment.

There was a shift in the darkness, a movement gone unseen in the pitch black. Jean pushed himself with as much effort as possible onto his elbows only to hear the metallic clang of chain scraping against masonry. He moved again, and though the searing pain of his leg obscured most feeling in his body other than the springing of tears to his eyes, he felt the cold steel shackle clamped around his wrist.

He was trapped. Somewhere. Somewhere dark.

The shift happened again, and this time Jean recognized the sound of uniform boots clattering against stone flooring. Probably a Military Police officer to sentence him to a lifetime in a dark cell, waiting for death to mercifully overcome him.

There were more footsteps, certainly more than one person, and a quiet, raspy voice murmured, “Looks like the brat’s finally awake.”

A deeper voice, stern and familiar, replied, “Quiet.”

The first voice scoffed. “Whatever. Where the hell’s four eyes with that candle? I can’t see a damned thing down here.”

Jean didn’t dare speak for fear of reprimand, nor did he move the chain that held his wrist. He only waited, until a third pair of footsteps came from above and descended down until they stopped somewhere ahead.

With the footsteps, though, came a small flame, casting a dim orange light over the face of someone, older than himself but still young, wearing thick glasses and a sly smirk.

“He calls me names ‘cause he likes me,” they said solemnly, then split into a toothy grin. The second voiced scoffed again before the first cut in.

“Hanji, the candle, please.”

“Oh, right!”

The dim flame shifted hands, lit up a broad chest before it was lifted to one torch along a stone wall, then another, until the entire area was glowing yellow.

In the new light, Jean’s stomach dropped.

A jail cell. He was locked in a jail cell, nothing inside but the stiff bed beneath him and the shackle that held his wrist to a long chain hanging from the ceiling.

Beyond that, though, he saw that the familiar voice belonged to a familiar face that had haunted his nightmares: blond, squared jaw, sharp cheekbones, blue eyes, an emblem of white and blue wings stitched onto the breast pocket of his jacket.

Erwin Smith, commander of the Survey Corps, was staring at him with the same somber expression that disrupted his sleep more times than he let on.

Suddenly, all Jean could think of was Marco. Every time Erwin Smith appeared in his dreams, it was to tell him that Marco was gone, lost forever, that Jean would have to go on living without the boy who made the weight of living worthwhile.

He struggled for words from a throat that felt unused—how long had he been out?—and they stumbled out of his mouth in a dry, raspy mess. “M-Marco—he’s—where is M—”

The smallest person in front of the cell rolled his eyes. “Who brought the food and water,” he said flatly. “Kid sounds like he’s got a mouthful of wood chips.”

The third person perked up and stepped to the staircase in the corner. They picked up a wooden cup and a tray with a plate, slid the tray beneath the metal bars, and managed to fit the cup between two with a wiry hand.

Jean stared at the food—a bland-looking pile of vegetable mash and a dry bread roll—dubiously. Unsure if this was an execution tactic, poison, some sort of conspiracy.

The short man’s eyes rolled again. “What the hell are you waiting for? Eat it, we don’t have all day.”

There was enough slack in the chain for Jean to gingerly crawl across the bed, minding his leg, which he found covered in bandages with a heavy splint beneath, to retrieve the food. He took a small bite of vegetables—bland, just as expected—and suddenly his stomach seemed cavernous. He couldn’t shovel the food into his mouth fast enough, and when it was all gone, he gulped down the stale water greedily.

The short man’s nose was crinkled in disgust when Jean looked up again. He opened his mouth to speak, but Erwin put a hand on his shoulder and he huffed and leaned against the wall instead.

“Where am I?” Jean tried with his throat not quite so dry.

“Military Police custody,” Erwin explained. “They have you in an underground holding cell beneath their headquarters.”

Of course they did, Jean thought with a huff. Of course.

“Allow me to introduce myself. Jean Kirschstein, I am Erwin Smith, commander of—”

“Of the Survey Corps,” Jean finished blandly, without looking at him. “I know who you are.”

Erwin nodded. “And with me are Captain Levi and our chief scientist, Squad Leader Hanji Zoe.”

The short man only scowled, and the person with the glasses waved with the faintest beginnings of a smile.

“Why are you here?” Jean said in lieu of a greeting. “Where is Marco? Where’s my mom?”

“Your mother has been informed of your whereabouts. She is unfortunately prohibited by law to visit you in your current position, but we have confirmation that she is staying with relatives nearby. And this Marco?”

“Marco Bodt,” Jean rattled off. “Just graduated, leader of the 19th squad, tall, freckles—”

He didn’t realize there were tears in his eyes until one dripped down his chin.

“I’m sorry,” Erwin said, and Jean braced himself for the worst. “I have not been informed of the status of any soldiers but my own.”

It settled at least the tiniest part of Jean’s stomach, and he breathed a steady inhale. There was still a chance. He was okay. He would be okay. “You never told me why you’re here.”

Erwin cut right to the point. “We’ve only recently received permission to speak with you, and if you are willing, I have a few questions.”

Jean shrugged.

“How much of the Battle of Trost do you remember?”

Eren’s vacant expression crossed his mind again, and Jean bit back the tears that sprung up.

“Enough,” he gritted.

Erwin nodded solemnly and continued on. “You had passed out by the time the Garrison arrived to collect those of you who were left. You don’t recall waking up before now, do you?”

Jean shrugged. “No.”

“I figured as much. The Garrison passed you into Military Police custody, and their sedatives tend to be on the heavy side.”

Levi broke his relative silence with an involuntary snort before the harsh smirk left his face. Hanji didn’t hide their laughter, but the telltale tug of the very edge of Erwin’s lips was concealed with a clear of his throat.

Jean blinked slowly at him, trying to make any sense of what he was saying. “So… how long have I been out?”

“The Garrison found you on Saturday evening, approximately,” Hanji answered. “It’s Tuesday afternoon.”

Four days.

Four _days_ he’d been out. So much could happen in four days—hell, so much happened in four _hours_ the last time he’d been awake. How many people had been lost? How many titans were left? Was Trost even still standing?

The questions must have been written all over his face, because Erwin nodded at Levi, then Hanji, then turned to Jean.

“All but one of the cadets with you remained unharmed at the time of their rescue on Saturday. Unfortunately, I know nothing of their whereabouts since then. The final one, however—”

“Eren died,” Jean gritted through clenched teeth. He dragged his spoon down the middle of the empty plate before him. “It doesn’t need repeating.”

Erwin frowned, just slightly. “He will be honored with the rest of the soldiers who were lost during the battle and subsequent cleanup. I am sorry.”

“I don’t get it,” Jean murmured. “I don’t… How was he there? He was eaten by a titan in the morning, and then he was… just there. Dead.”

It couldn’t have been a mistake—Armin had watched the whole thing happen, had nearly lost himself from the shock of it before Christa calmed him. Jean had been there the whole time, hadn’t he? There was no way he could have remembered something like that wrong.

A nod, and Erwin gestured at Hanji. “That’s why I brought Hanji with me. Hanji?”

Hanji perked up like they’d been waiting for it. Levi groaned, mumbling something along the lines of, _“goddamnit, don’t get them talking about science”_ into his chest.

Hanji Zoe wasn’t the prototype Survey Corps soldier that had been hammered into Jean’s mind for fifteen years. Average height, bordering on scrawny in weight, with a hooked nose, hopelessly frazzled ponytail, thick glasses, and a smile that was almost out of character for someone from their branch, they bounced over to the bars separating Jean’s cell and clung onto them like some kind of oversized bird in a cage. An unnerving stare down later, and Hanji shook their head and began.

“ _Well_ ,” they said, voice lilting, “I’ve been studying titans since I was recruited, and _recently_ , there have been some rumblings about certain titans…”

They trailed off, hemming and hawing about word choice before Levi shoved them aside, looking none too impressed.

“Some of the idiot titans aren’t idiot titans, but idiot humans trapped in idiot titan bodies,” he groused. “Fucking hell, Hanji, do you have to make everything so damn—”

Erwin shot him a look, and Levi scoffed yet again before looking away.

Jean wasn’t paying attention, though, as the words sunk in.

“No way Jaeger was a titan this whole time,” he murmured. He made eye contact with Hanji, whose dark eyes were impossibly wide beneath their glasses. “No way. You have no idea how much the bastard hated them. Used to go on and on and on about how he wanted to become one of you and exterminate them all.”

“Sounds like overcompensation to me,” Levi said to the air before being hushed again, this time by both Erwin and Hanji.

“That was what I came to study,” Hanji spoke over him. “I believe it may have been something innate in him that was triggered by something else. He may not have even known about the ability before. You said that he was eaten by a titan?”

Jean shrugged. “I didn’t see it, Armin did.”

“Well, be it so, that could have been an element of his transformation process. I’ve been calling them ‘shifters,’ just for ease of remembering, and your friend may have just been one of them.”

Jean meant to murmur something, _he’s not my friend_ , or the like, but he bit his tongue. Eren, aspiring titan slayer, a titan shifter himself. Ironic.

“We have reason to believe that the Armored and Colossal titans may be like him.”

All ironic humor was sapped from his body.

Jean stared at them in shock, confusion. Something almost _protective_ crawled up his chest, the sudden urge to ensure that everyone knew damn well that Eren Jaeger may have been an overemotional asshole, a suicidal fucking bastard with a hero complex, but he wasn’t _bad_. He wouldn’t flatten entire cities, force humanity to lose what it had left of its walls, _kill people_.

Sure, he’d gotten close to taking Marco and Annie out, but that was… It had to be titan instincts, right? Eren wouldn’t kill a person, would never try to. He loved humanity too goddamn much for it to cross his mind. How was Jean supposed to know it was… it was him... that he wasn’t a titan but just… just a fucking _kid_.

But then he used to believe _he_ wasn’t a murderer too.

Jean didn’t realize he was crying again until he saw Hanji’s expression, eyes wide and wet, their hands fallen from the cell bars and hung idly at their sides.

“I don’t mean he was one of them,” they backtracked, pity coloring their voice. “Just that his being a shifter could explain them disappearing! I’m sure your friend was…”

They trailed off, and Jean sniffed loudly, wiping his unchained arm across his eyes. He didn’t have the words in himself to tell Hanji that he wasn’t upset about that as much as _other_ things, but he couldn’t speak for fear of losing himself to the sobs that wanted so desperately to be let out of the cage of his tightening throat.

He didn’t let himself talk for a prolonged moment, just let silent tears fall down his cheeks. He convinced himself for the bulk of the time that everyone would leave him in darkness again, to cry alone without stealing time from people who surely had more important things to do with their lives, but they waited patiently. Even when Levi got restless and started to clear his throat irritably, Erwin calmed him.

It took time, but Jean finally managed to quell the tears enough to calmly look Erwin in the eye without the threat of childish cries pouring from his lips. Erwin watched attentively, and Jean let his broken voice quietly speak.

“What are they going to do to me?”

He cursed the high-pitched waver of his tone almost as much as he cursed the familiar somber expression that Erwin gave him. Almost as much as he cursed the lump that expression caused to rise in his throat, as much as the tears that resumed their pathway down his cheeks as much as he tried not to let them.

“Jean—”

“Y-you said I was in their custody, in their c-cell,” Jean croaked. “What’s going to happen to me?”

Erwin’s eyes slipped shut. He breathed two heaving times before he opened them with more clarity than had been in them before.

“The military branches have been meeting sporadically throughout the days you’ve been asleep,” he said. “Mostly to discuss Cadet Jaeger and what the confirmation of the existence of shifters could mean for our duties and for humanity from here on out.”

Jean nodded, the shaking of his body shifting the chain against the flimsy metal frame of his bed.

“It’s a giant circle jerk of which branch can act the most self-righteous about what they would’ve done with the titan bastard had they paid any attention to it at all before it kicked the bucket.”

Erwin shot Levi a warning look. Levi raised his hands in defense.

“What? You’re talking to him like you’re his subordinate. He’s fifteen, old man. You could be his father.”

Erwin blanched, barely noticeable, but followed it with a silent nod to go on. Levi pushed a hand through meticulously styled hair and breathed a drawn-out sigh.

“The Garrison are pissed because they could’ve used the bastard to patch the hole in the wall with something better than the flimsy-ass wood paneling they’ve got nailed onto it right now. Shit glasses over there is pissed—”

“Let _down_ ,” Hanji corrected, apologetic. “I wasn’t angry, I was _let_ _down_ , for research purposes.”

“Whatever,” said Levi. “Shit glasses is _let down_ because they wanted to experiment and work with the kid to—what the hell was it?”

“Recruit him as a member of the Survey Corps,” Hanji said. “To work with him on controlling and honing his power, so we could have a shifter ally in the fight against the titans.”

 _Ally_. Jean bit his tongue.

“And the unicorps bastards—I mean, the _Military Police_ ,” Levi spat like the words were made of acid, burning his tongue with every syllable, “are the worst of all with it. They got word of the titan kid and wanted to do some invasive shit to him for answers, then kill him on the spot.”

“O-oh?” Jean managed to stutter around the lump so high in his throat.

“And now they’ve changed their tune since they realized everyone else wanted him alive,” Levi continued without stopping. “Now they’re claiming they _‘just wanted to save him’_ and shit like I wasn’t right the hell there when Nile Dawk said he wanted him dead.”

Jean swallowed the lump again. Levi wasn’t looking at him, no eye contact with anything but a farther-off spot on the wall, still murmuring to himself under his breath, avoiding Jean’s question entirely. Stalling. Good things never came from stalling.

“Th-that doesn’t answer my question,” Jean choked. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“I was _getting there_ ,” Levi bit back, but the confidence in his voice was waning, like he was nervous.

Jean’s hands trembled so violently that the shackle’s clamp ached around his bones.

“Levi,” Erwin said carefully. He touched Levi on the elbow, and Levi turned exasperated eyes on him. There was some kind of silent agreement between them, and Erwin stepped into Levi’s spot in front of the bars.

“There is no easy way to say this,” he spoke carefully, “but because of the Military Police’s change of mind paired with the fact that the titan turned out to be a human, you are to be tried in the military tribunal for both treason and murder.”

The lump rose further, choking him, the pressure in his throat too much to stay silent. A sob burst its way out of Jean’s throat before he could stop it, and it broke the dam. Heaving cries shook his entire body until he couldn’t breathe, much less think.

Jean Kirschstein: top ten Trainee Corps graduate, aspiring Military Police officer, fifteen years old, murderer.

It took every ounce of him to form four shaking, nearly incoherent words: “And if I’m guilty?”

Erwin’s downcast eyes told him all he needed to know. It was around a head full of white noise that Jean could barely make out the words, “Then they will call for your execution.”

It all happened in a flurry of movement: Jean lunged forward in bed to protest, to come closer, to seek solace, whatever his reason had been; the shackle _yanked_ against his wrist and the chain scraped across his bad leg as a result, hard enough that he cried out in pain; and suddenly, the room around Erwin, Hanji, and Levi was filled with Military Police guards, brandishing guns and blades.

Jean scurried back to the head of the bed, feeling both small and too big for the room as he stared down the barrel of the same type of rifle he’d been polishing so confidently just days before.

So childish, palms covering his face as he whimpered in the shadows of the men he’d once idolized.

So childish, for a murderer on death row.

“Stand down,” a voice barked in the commotion, familiar yet unfamiliar. It wasn’t until a blond head emerged from the crowd of guards that Jean realized it was Erwin. Every bad dream he’d had starring Erwin Smith and his calm, sympathetic tone hadn’t prepared him for the booming shout of a protective commander’s orders.

“I said stand _down_ ,” Erwin hissed at the nearest guard, who couldn’t have been much older than Jean himself, brandishing a gun right at his forehead. “There is no threat here. Give him at least a _small_ amount of peace before tomorrow.”

 _Tomorrow_ thudded hard in Jean’s chest like the guard had pulled the trigger right into his heart. He gasped into his hand to keep from letting out another scream, but even as the three riled Survey Corps personnel shooed them back up the staircase, Levi cursing loudly at their backs, the guards’ presence continued to unnerve him. Terrified, angry expressions crawled beneath Jean’s skin as a stark reminder that he was a _monster_ now. A subhuman killer that even _Marco_ couldn’t look at without terror in those big, beautiful eyes.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said into his hands. His voice rose steadily with his pleas, until he was nearly shouting. “I didn’t want to kill Eren, I j-just wanted to save Marco. How was I supposed t-to know it was him? H-he was a titan! I’ve been trained for years to k-kill titans, now they want to kill _me_ for it.”

“They think I’m a monster,” Jean said, quieter. “What if they’re right?”

“They’re not,” Levi groused. Jean stared at him, bleary but sparking wonder in his expression. “Don’t look at me like that, you’re gonna give me hives. Listen, you’re a brat kid, but even your witnesses said you didn’t mean to do the shit that went down.”

Jean heaved a shaking breath. “W-witnesses?”

“Couple of kids at the scene identified themselves as the Jaeger kid’s family,” said Levi. “Little blond and a creepy-ass girl in a scarf.”

“Armin and Mikasa,” Jean murmured under his breath. “A-are they here?”

“No. Weren’t allowed to come to the trial for one reason or another. Probably to weaken your case.”

“But why would they defend me? I killed their—”

“For the same reason we’re here,” Levi told him. “Same reason you just had that little outburst that sent the cavalry of morons in to aim pointy shit at your face.”

Jean looked from Levi, all hard eyes and biting sarcasm, to Hanji, gentler and softer with just a hint of ferocity hiding behind their eyes, as they laid a hand back on the rusted bars between them.

“You didn’t mean it,” they said kindly. “You were unaware. Unfortunately, that opinion isn’t in popular favor with the Military Police around here, but if nothing else…”

They trailed off, looking to Erwin, who was approaching the bars with careful footsteps. “The real reason we came here to talk to you was an attempt to help you,” he said confidently.

Jean stared at his hands, the shackle holding his right wrist just tight enough to pinch the cold, pale skin around it. Heaving breaths shook his shoulders as he steadied his words.

“You want to help me,” he said into the air, more of a statement than a question.

“Yes,” Erwin answered without hesitation. “Should you be found guilty, yours will be the latest in a growing list of unpunished human rights violations committed by the Military Police; however, if your rightful innocence is proven…”

Erwin knelt down, one knee planted against the dusty stone flooring and eyes now level with Jean’s, and he extended a large, calloused hand through the bars. Jean was mindful of the chain and his throbbing ankle this time as he crept forward to the edge of the bed. He hesitantly clasped Erwin’s palm, and Erwin responded with a firm shake of the hand.

“I would like to offer you a position in the Survey Corps.”

_“I was thinking about the Survey Corps as a back-up plan.”_

Marco’s hesitant voice from those days ago echoed in the back of his mind. Jaw trembling, Jean stared at Erwin with wide eyes. “What? Why me?”

_“You’re not gonna want to hear this, but Eren isn’t totally off-base. The Survey Corps, they’re not suicidal, they’re just…”_

“It takes a lot of reckless courage to be fifteen years old and fight a titan as unpredictable as a shifter on your own, especially when you’re trying to save the people you care about.”

_“Brave to the point of stupidity?”_

Erwin smiled, just enough for Jean to catch it over where his eyes had fixed on their clasped hands. “We’ve garnered ourselves a bit of a reputation for recklessness, in case you hadn’t heard,” he smirked. “And I have a sneaking suspicion that your kind of recklessness would do well fighting on the side of humanity along with us.”

“I…” Jean unclasped his hand from Erwin’s and stared at it as it lay motionless, limp in his own lap. He recalled laying side-by-side with Marco in bed that night, when their fingers had slotted together so easily and everything had felt like it was going to be okay, that their fear was unjustified, if only for a moment.

Nothing was okay then, the fear more potent than ever, Marco’s location once again unknown and Jean’s chances of having a location anywhere other than a funeral pyre within the next day now looking less than fifty-fifty.

“With the break in your ankle as severe as it is, I understand that it should keep you out of commission for several weeks. Should you choose to join us, your purpose until you are fit to fight again would be assistive—Hanji and their aide, Moblit, could use your help with research and other duties related to your case.”

Jean blinked slowly at Erwin and swallowed the bile creeping up his throat. “Do I have to have an answer right now?”

Erwin shook his head. “The recruitment ceremony has been pushed back to Thursday night because of the delays in city cleanup. May I ask for your answer then?”

The tone of his voice rang so sincere, like he genuinely thought he could help Jean make it to Thursday night. The same sort of tone he was used to hearing whispered from Marco’s lips during his darkest moments.

_“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you're not a strong person, Jean.”_

_“But that just means that you can relate to how the weak feel.”_

_“That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m alive.”_

Glassy eyes brimming yet again, such a child, Jean nodded once, slowly. “Yeah,” he choked. “I’ll—I’ll have an answer for you.”

What that answer would be, he wasn’t quite sure yet. With the Military Police calling for his head, it wasn’t as if sticking to his outdated guns was a valid choice anymore. It was either join the Survey Corps and give up every ideal he’d held for three years of training, join the Garrison and hate his job, or go home to his mother and spend the rest of his days a disgrace to their family name.

That was, if he wasn’t dead before he got the chance.

There was no winning, not anymore. He lost any chance he’d ever had at the life he’d been dreaming of for fifteen years, and there was nobody to blame but himself.

Erwin nodded, and the smile on his face was calm, almost inviting. He stood back on his feet, barely pausing to dust the dirt from his pristine white pants, but his eyes remained carefully trained on the tear-stained mess of Jean’s face.

“We have a couple more meetings today to discuss what should happen. I will do my very best to be as persuasive as possible, given the fact that the Military Police and I don’t quite get along.”

Levi’s head quietly _thunked_ against the stone wall behind him. “ _That’s_ an understatement,” he grunted, dark irony dripping from each syllable.

Erwin ignored him in favor of saluting, fist over his heart—like he was giving it up, just like in Jean’s worst dreams.

Jean swallowed and saluted back, weakly, the chain fastened to his wrist dragging across his chest over the thin cotton shirt he’d been changed into at some point in the darkness of the last days.

Levi merely raised a wordless hand before following Erwin back up the stairs, but Hanji hung close to the bars still, their fingers tensed around the corroded metal, eyes far-off, somewhere else entirely.

Jean waited in the silence, and it only took a moment for Hanji to collect themself. They managed a weak smile that didn’t quite reach their glazed eyes.

“It was nice to meet you, Jean,” they said. “As much as I regret the circumstances.”

They turned without another word, but Jean leaned forward, called a quiet, _“wait,”_ after them, and Hanji spun back around on a heel.

“Yes?”

“Um…” Jean fumbled for words, not quite sure what to say, but also not keen on being alone just yet—at least another few seconds before he was left with nothing but his thoughts once more. He scratched a hand through his matted hair and breathed a heavy sigh before he uttered, “I-if my mom is around and you see her, can you, um. Tell her I’m alive?”

“She knows,” Hanji said, gentler than before. “But I will be sure to let her know that you are awake and stable.”

Jean barely uttered a thank you before they followed Erwin and Levi, up the stairs and out of the room.

Alone again, his head fell back onto the pillow, and he closed his eyes with the words from his mother’s note so long ago swimming between his ears.

_Know that whatever happens, I will always love you, no matter what._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is the end of the first arc and i promise no one's freaking out about that fact more than i am


	11. and you'll never find your way back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first: thank you all sosososo much for everything  
> second: please mind the warning tags, as they're pretty much all in this chapter  
> second and a half: please remember the very key word in the second to last tag  
> third: i'm sorry

Jean had no memories of his father. It wasn’t something he had ever thought much about—by the time the man had up and left for Wall Sina, Jean still spent most of his days swaddled in soft cotton blankets, asleep, or lying on his pudgy belly while he and his mother played peekaboo between naps. There was nothing to miss about someone he hadn’t even been old enough to register as his father.

He had no memory of the time his mother caught his father coming home in the middle of the night, someone else’s scent smeared into his skin. No memory of her breaking down in tears when he’d told her, flatly, that there was another woman, thinner and richer and four months pregnant, and he was leaving in the morning to be with her. That she would never see him again until their son— _her_ son, because Jean wouldn’t claim him as a dad as much as he wouldn’t claim Jean as a son—was being hauled off to his execution, and even then he wouldn’t acknowledge her presence.

He had no memory of the morning he left, when his mother held in the tears because she didn’t want to focus on herself when her son was hungry and fussing, when she’d picked him up for a feeding, when he’d lifted his tiny head just enough to look at her with his very first smile: all gums, the very tip of his tongue peeking out from between them. He couldn’t remember that she had finally let herself break down into tears, or that it had been the very moment she’d sworn to herself that they would make it through, as long as they had each other.

What he did remember were the years she’d spent working day in and day out so they could afford their home, so Jean could eat three meals a day and have the privilege of going to grammar school to learn to read and write. He could remember coming home from school in tears after kids at school had teased him for being chubby, running right into his mother’s arms, and quietly sniffling into her work apron while she told him he was her perfect little boy no what a bunch of rude children had to say about his size. He remembered not bothering to hide his misty grin when she came home from work with an envelope addressed from her sister in Sina, enough money inside from their late parents’ will that she’d finally managed to worm out of a lawyer that they could finally afford a life that didn’t revolve around work. He remembered, eight years old and naïve, promising that he would join the Military Police when he grew up so they could be safe with what was left of their family, and he remembered her holding him close and assuring him that she would never stop believing in him, _my sweet, kind little boy, my angel_.

He clung to his memories of her like a lifeline: his only friend for the first twelve years of his life, still his very closest confidante. They were what got him through the lonely first days of training and the cold nights before he’d found a best friend in Marco Bodt. They were what kept him from losing himself in a dim jail cell beneath the military tribunal for a hellish night of uneasy tossing and turning between nightmares of Erwin Smith holding Marco’s bloodied cloak, his mother’s torn apron, his own limp corpse.

When the sharp clanging of metal that woke him from a fitful sleep didn’t subside when he opened his eyes, he knew it wasn’t a nightmare anymore. The torch along the wall had been snuffed out in the night, leaving him in the dark once more, the only light coming from beyond the staircase, its filtered glow swirling with dust.

His skin felt grimy with earth and sweat, the meager clothing he’d been provided with soaked through with it, the faintest tinge of dark-dried blood seeped through the itchy brown material of his pants when the torch was lit up once more.

This time, there were not friendly faces illuminated in the flame, but two officers—one man, large and gruff; one woman, smaller, with an unfocused gaze—with forest green unicorn shield patches on their arms. The man muttered something to the woman, neither sparing more than a passing look in Jean’s direction.

He pushed himself upright in bed and cleared his throat; they only crinkled their noses in distaste. He murmured a questioning, “um?” at them; they shushed him and continued pay attention only to each other. He finally gathered the guts to ask what they were there for; “Shut your fucking mouth, monster, why don’t ya?” the man spat without hesitation.

Jean shrank back, curling in on himself at the foot of the bed, mind racing. His limbs ached, not just from injury but underuse, his stomach grumbled like a dying animal. He wondered idly if they had even managed to feed him in four days of sedation, if the soaked dressings on his ankle had been changed at all, if someone had bathed him of the filth of battle. How long had Erwin, Levi, and Hanji been there to defend him? How much had they managed to change his situation, even before he woke up?

The fear pounded in his chest at the thought. Had their meetings gone well? Had they convinced the powers that be not to kill a child for something he never intended to do?

Someone shouted down the stairwell, and one of the officers stared up at them, expression more than a little annoyed.

“And why the hell not?” he barked back, fists tensing.

The person up the stairs’ voice was muffled, but Jean could barely make out a few words: “Listen, I’m not explaining the whole damn thing to you down the stairs. They’re not coming. Just get the kid already.”

“So we wasted all this goddamned time for a no-show?”

“It’s only been a few minutes, Collins.”

The officer—Collins, and it fucked with Jean’s head to put a name to the face that spat words at him with so much disdain, more than it did to only know him as Nameless Officer #1—cast a disparaging look Jean’s way. “A few minutes I could have spent somewhere _else_ ,” he groused.

Before Jean had much time to contemplate the conversation, the bars in front of him were wrenched open with the harsh sound of metal scraping metal, and Collins and his comrade were trudging towards him. In Collins’ large hand was a key, and he snatched Jean’s shackled wrist before he could flinch away, fiddling with the rusted lock. When the clamp was unfastened, Jean blinked tired eyes at him.

“Am I free?” he asked faintly, the worst kind of hope shaking his voice. The hope that Erwin had been successful, that he was leaving the cell and going straight into his mother’s waiting embrace.

Collins snorted under his breath, tossing the shackle aside so it clattered to the ground with an echo and procuring a pair of handcuffs from where they had been slung over one of his gear straps. “Not a fucking chance,” he said with more mirth in his voice than Jean imagined even Levi could muster. He tossed the cuffs in the air once, caught them in a tight fist. “Your trial starts in half an hour.”

The other officer, silent, snatched the cuffs from Collins’ closed hand, pushed him aside, and clamped them tight around Jean’s wrists behind his back.

“D-did Erwin go to his meeting?” he asked her desperately over his shoulder. “Has anything changed?”

Collins raised an eyebrow before him. “Ain’t no point in asking her, dumbass, she ain’t got the voice to answer.”

The other officer coughed under her breath, dark eyes shooting in his direction. She signed something with her free hand, and only then did Jean notice, staring over his shoulder, the long scar trailing down her throat and disappearing beneath a crisp blue shirt.

“Sorry,” Jean mumbled, unsure why he was apologizing to someone who likely wanted him dead.

The woman shrugged in response, mousy hair bobbing over her shoulders. Without a look at his face, she shoved Jean’s cuffed hands in Collins’ direction and stood primly up from her perch on the bed.

“This way,” Collins spat harshly, tugging Jean far less neatly from his seat. The pressure on his splint shoved it right up against his ankle, and the searing pain of days before climbed up his leg, collapsing it beneath him as he cried out.

Collins only rolled his eyes. He looked at the woman and jerked his head. “Naomi, you helpin’ me with this punk-ass crybaby or what?”

The woman stepped to his other side, roughly looped her arm around his waist, and gave Collins the same unaffected stare before they dragged him out of the cell and up the stairs.

The walk was the kind of hell that even the sweetest memories—his mother cooking his favorite foods when he was upset as a child, Marco’s soft lips against his in the supply room, the both of them embracing in the kitchen while Jean watched on—couldn’t even mask. Without medication to sedate him, each moment he was yanked along was a test in holding back every cry of pain that wanted to leave his lips. By the time the scenery changed from the cold stone of the dungeon hallway to pristine grey-tinted marbled walls and shining flooring, Jean’s scalp was soaked through once more with cold sweat, his shirt clinging to every inch of his torso with it.

Maybe, he thought humorlessly, it was too much of a stretch to ask to be cleaned up before being sent to his death.

Naomi signed something to Collins. He nodded back, shrugged, and let go of his hold on Jean, leaving him to lean heavily into Naomi’s side. At Jean’s questioning sound, Collins rolled his eyes.

“You get fifteen minutes with whoever’s in the holding room before your trial. Might be a good idea to say goodbye.”

Fifteen minutes to say goodbye.

Goodbye?

Naomi’s lips moved as Collins’ back retreated, and it took a moment to realize she was mouthing something at him. _“Be,”_ he could make out as she exaggerated her lips around each syllable, _“careful.”_

Through eyes that he wasn’t aware were tearing until he blinked, Jean sent her his best confused expression, hesitant to speak. She gestured at his leg as she helped him stagger forward, only a few steps until a wood-framed door with a gilded knob was before them. She steadied him on his one good leg, then stepped back so he could see her touch the tips of her fingers to the point of her chin, then just the middle while the rest splayed back behind it.

He hadn’t an idea what it meant, but her torn expression when she unlocked both his cuffs and the knob in front of him told him enough. The one Military Police officer in this whole place who hadn’t acted like he was subhuman scum, and he couldn’t even find it in himself to speak to her, couldn’t even understand it when she tried to speak to him in her own way.

He didn’t watch her leave for too long until the unlatched door creaked teasingly before him. His stomach lurched at the thought of who could be waiting for him, what kind of news they were bringing.

It could be Erwin, Levi, and Hanji. They seemed fairly confident that Jean’s case wasn’t a lost cause. Erwin had looked right into his eyes with all of his confidence that Jean would be there on Thursday night to join him in the Survey Corps, and the more he thought about it, joining the reckless bastards, the more it hadn’t seemed like a bad idea. It could be them.

It could be his mother. Erwin _had_ said she was close by. Hanji said she knew he was alive, that they would tell her that he was awake again. _God_ , he wanted it to be his mom. He wanted to rush into her arms like he had days before, cry into her shoulder like he had countless times as a child. He wanted her to use her superhuman mom powers to make everything okay. He just wanted his mother.

(With no idea where he was and if he even still loved him after what he’d done, Jean tried to quash the hope that it was Marco in favor of the hope that Marco was okay and coping with his losses somewhere without him.)

Jean pushed the door open with a sore wrist, and the sight immediately sprung tears to his eyes.

“ _Mom_ ,” he cried, rushing towards her as quickly as his leg would let him go, letting the door slam shut behind him. His mother welcomed him with open arms, colliding against him so hard that it knocked a shaking, breathy sob out of his throat.

“Jean-bo,” she whispered thickly. “My baby, what have they done to you?”

“Mama,” was all he could return, tears falling freely down his grimy cheeks, the scarred bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Do not apologize to me,” she said as sternly as she could manage. She tugged away, just a few inches, and cupped the line of Jean’s jaw in a trembling palm. “You don’t have to apologize to me. My darling, my _angel_. Come here, come sit down. Off that leg.”

A plain wooden bench sat up against one wall, unoccupied other than a small burlap sack. Ms. Kirschstein placed a careful hand between Jean’s shaking shoulder blades, entirely too reminiscent of years before, when she’d told him he didn’t gave to go. Didn’t have to train, didn’t have to fight, didn’t have to cause the death of the kid who could have saved humanity if he tried hard enough.

He wished he would have listened to her then. He could have lived a good enough life as a grocer or a fisherman. Maybe he would have met Marco anyway.

Each step came with a pained hitch of breath until he could sit back down, and he buried himself in his mother’s sleeves like he was a child again. If he hid between the soft folds of fabric like he had when he was younger and more innocent, maybe he could just disappear back into that time frame and the mess he’d made would just fix itself.

“I didn’t want to,” he sniffled into her shoulder. “I didn’t _mean it_.”

A careful hand threaded through his hair, scratching where his undercut hadn’t been shaven in too long—he’d meant to cut it days ago, before the recruitment ceremony was supposed to happen. His mother didn’t say anything, but her quiet hum beneath his cheek pressed to her chest steadied him as much as it could.

“Mom,” Jean whimpered. “Mom, you don’t have to love me anymore. Y-you don’t have to love me.”

The hand in his hair stilled. The humming subsided. Half of Jean prayed that she would leave, forget about him, never have to remember what a disgrace her only son turned out to be. The other half crumbled when she wrenched him forward and threw her arms around him with a badly suppressed sob.

“Why would you _ever_ think that? What have they done to make you _think_ that?”

 _Monster_ rung in the back of his head. An echo of Collins’ harsh voice, of every aching fear he’d had since waking up in the darkness with Eren’s empty eyes lingering in the back of his mind. That was what he was now, wasn’t he? No matter what Erwin tried to convince the court, no matter the encouragements his mother whispered against his scalp, the image of Eren’s lifeless body and Marco’s terrified eyes remained a hovering presence, just there to remind him of how badly he’d ruined everything.

Jean leaned into the hand pressed to his burning cheek, the pad of a thumb brushing away every salty tear that trickled from the corner of his eye until his breathing settled, just a bit.

“I would never,” Ms. Kirschstein whispered, quietly, carefully, “ _never_ stop loving you. I promised the day you came into this world that I would love you until the end of time, and as scary as it is out there right now, baby boy, time is still ticking on.”

“It would make it easier,” Jean mumbled. “If you hated me instead, you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“It would make _nothing_ easier,” she said in reply, stern but filled with so much love that Jean had to steady himself. “Because hating you is not something I am physically capable of. I’d worry about you anyway. You underestimate just how _much_ of my life you are, Jean-bo.”

“I just wanted to make you happy,” he said. “I wanted you to be safe. I threw all of that away because I got scared.”

“You make me happy every single day, my angel. Fifteen years and counting. Some fancy old house in Sina has nothing to do with that.”

His head lifted from the her chest, just like the story she’d always told him about the morning his father left, and he tried his very best attempt at a broken, watery smile through bitten lips and swollen eyes.

Her fingers brushed disheveled pieces of ashy hair off of his forehead so she could plant a kiss in its place, sweet words crooned into his hairline.

“H-how is everyone?” Jean asked, quiet. “Have you spoken to anybody?”

He felt her muscles tense beneath the weight of his body leant against hers, and that was when the warning signals inside of him began to flare up.

“Your, um…” she fumbled for words. “The cute brunette—Sasha was her name?—and her friend, the smaller boy, visited briefly yesterday. Just before I was told you were awake, actually. They were shaken but mostly unharmed. Some scratches and cuts on both; the boy—Connie, yeah, Connie—had bandages on his hands, that was all.”

Jean nodded shakily, thankful that Sasha and Connie were okay, wondering how it was that they’d managed to find his mom or even get through to Wall Sina in the first place. The sickly hopeful part of him wanted to believe that Marco had told them where to go so he would know himself how Jean was doing; the more realistic side dreaded that his best friend’s—the boy he loved’s—name wasn’t the first thing out of his mother’s mouth.

His mom turned just enough beneath him to grab the sack that sat feet from her on the bench. She carefully unknotted the string holding it shut, fingers fumbling as she spoke: “They brought a few things for you that they said you might want.”

She didn’t hand over the bag. It sat in her lap, one palm carefully draped over the unopened edge of it, as she pulled pieces out one by one.

A bread roll, smashed and covered in crumbs but still edible. She passed it to Jean, and he took one small bite despite the ache of dread that filled him. It sat rock-hard in the pit of his stomach; he eyed the roll once more and placed it on the bench next to him.

A shred of a rag that looked the same as the ones from the Garrison supply room. Jean shifted the rough fabric between his palms until Sasha’s screams of terror weren’t so deafening in his eardrums. Until he couldn’t feel the heaving of her body or her tears soaking into his shoulder any longer.

His mom’s hands stopped before the last item, clenching and unclenching around the very edges of the burlap sack. She looked back and forth once, twice, once more—like she was stalling, debating whether or not to even give it to him.

A rap on the door stalled her even further, the voice on the other side shrill and piercing.

_“You have five more minutes until the trial. Wrap it up.”_

Jean’s heart pounded tenfold. How had it been ten minutes already? He hadn’t even said goodbye yet. There was still something left in the bag. He still hadn’t asked about Marco. He—he hadn’t said goodbye, he only had five minutes, what was he—

Ms. Kirschstein placed a crumpled, stained piece of parchment in his unfolded palm. The last thing in the bag. She didn’t look at him.

Innocuous as it looked from the outside, Jean knew the crinkles of that parchment too well, smashed from being hastily shoved beneath a pillow each night for months since the sketchbook it came from was received as a St. Sina’s Day gift. He already knew that the curled edges of the paper matched perfectly to the shape of the breast pocket of the Trainee Corps jacket it had been in for days.

He didn’t recall the red-brown stain dried into the seam of the fold, though, or the blackened top corner. Those were new to him; those sprung more hot tears to his eyes.

Quaking fingers curled around the folded paper and lifted it right into the line of Jean’s vision. He felt his mother’s hand on his back again, reassuring and sound, but he also heard the uneasy hitch of her breath as she watched her son’s worst dream come true right before his eyes.

He unfolded the parchment to a familiar drawing: two stick figures—one with crudely drawn freckles, the other without—with their hands joined in a high-five. Above their heads, the words _BEST BUDS!_ ; below them, a pool of dried blood that hadn’t been drawn in the charcoal that the rest of the picture had; in each corner, charred markings disintegrated inches of parchment that had once been intact.

“Why,” was all Jean could choke, the rest of the words stuck in his throat as if by force. He swallowed the bile that burnt all the way up his esophagus. “W-why did they have th-this?”

He knew the answer. He already knew.

But that didn’t mean he had to accept it.

“He’s fine,” Jean whispered. “Right? He’s—he just wanted me to—”

“Jean,” Ms. Kirschstein cooed as gently as she could as his head fell to her shoulder. The lack of a _bo_ tacked onto the end wasn’t lost on him. Too serious for terms of endearment. “Baby, I am so sorry.”

And just like that, the world was snatched out from beneath Jean’s feet. No denial, no rationalization, no reassurance that he was wrong. Just an apology.

“After they plugged the hole in the wall,” she said measuredly, “Sasha said that there were still leftover titans inside that they had to fight. There were a—a lot of casualties to identify after that, during cleanup. She, um. Was tasked with helping the military nurses identify the bodies.”

“She could be wrong,” Jean said without a shred of faith in his own words. “Th-there were other boys with black hair, with dark skin and freckles, maybe it was—”

“It was in his pocket,” his mother said, gesturing to the ruined drawing held loosely between Jean’s palms. “That was how she knew it was him. The body was—”

She trailed off, bit her lip, released it with a wavering breath.

“Difficult,” she said. “To, um. Identify.”

Jean’s heart thudded. There was no time to process, to reflect. The sharp pound on the door came again, the voice just as shrill— _more_ shrill—than before.

 _“Wrap it up!”_ they said again. _“One more minute.”_

As fresh as it was, Jean had no time to react, not when the sharp edge of Collins’ voice was still growling at him from the darkest corner of his mind to say goodbye.

 _Goodbye_.

Fifteen minutes to say goodbye to the woman who’d loved and protected him for fifteen _years_. His friend before he’d had friends. His one good thing in the world, now that his other good thing was lost forever.

Jean stood, weight leant heavily on the leg that wouldn’t spring more tears to his already dripping eyes. His mother stood with him, a sturdy shoulder to lean on. She brushed his hair back from his face again, up off of his eyebrows so she could wipe away the soot on his forehead with a gentle swipe of her thumb.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. She didn’t protest this time, only pulled her arms around his shaking shoulders and guided his head to the crook of her neck. He did his best to keep his voice even as he spoke into the soft cotton of her dress. “Please tell Sasha and Connie thank you.”

“You know I will, angel.”

“I loved him,” he whispered into her shoulder. “I loved him so much, Mama.”

Maybe it was his downfall, loving Marco. Maybe everything would be different had he waited until Military Police initiation to confess, if he hadn’t been so desperate to find solace in Marco’s lips, to save him from the titan— _person_ —that never intended to kill a soul.

Maybe Marco would be alive still, maybe Jean wouldn’t be minutes from his own death.

Maybe Jean wouldn’t be missing the smell of citrus he’d taken comfort in without even realizing it.

The arms around him tightened, the hand placed softly against the back of his head tracing soothing patterns into his scalp.

“I know, baby. He loved you too, clear as day.”

Jean was quiet as the seconds ticked by, until the final pound of a fist against the door told him that it was time to go. Then he pressed his lips to the middle of the track of a tear cutting down his mother’s cheek.

“I don’t want to say goodbye,” he said, misty.

“Neither do I,” she said. “We’ll have hope. We’ll say ‘see you later.’”

Her voice wavered on it—what qualified as _later_ was up to a corrupt judge baited by the Military Police—and the sound of it burned at Jean’s insides, but he nodded anyway, kissed his mom’s cheek again.

“See you later,” he said. “I love you, Mom. Thank you.”

The door banged open behind him, an unfamiliar officer in the hallway behind it, wielding another pair of handcuffs. Two officers stood at the man’s sides, one unfamiliar, one with downcast eyes and a scar running down her throat.

Naomi didn’t look at him as the officer snapped the cuffs too tight around Jean’s wrists, all of her attention focused on her boots while the other two pushed at his back, forward, forward, out the door. It slammed shut behind him, its echo harsh in the otherwise silent hallway.

Behind it, every memory Jean had ever had of his mother sagged under what was likely his final one: her cheeks tear-stained, hands pulled into the same salute she’d sent him off to training with.

Muffled behind the heavy wood, Jean swore he could hear the words, _“No matter what.”_

 

* * *

 

The courtroom was bigger than he’d expected it to be—however many times he’d imagined it: young and childish and acting out fantasies of sending the bad guys to prison, or older and dreaming of fulfilling duties that sounded less and less dutiful the harder sharp elbows were shoved into his aching spine to keep him moving forward on a leg that wanted desperately to collapse beneath him. The same marble walls loomed around the place with the same aura of foreboding as they had in the hallway, the same wood that framed every door crafted into rows and rows of seats, a balcony, individual barred-off sections for each military branch, a judge’s bench at the center of it all.

It was like a theater, each seat poised for the perfect view of the main event. Each pair of eyes from the benches watched Jean like he was the antagonist of a play—someone they had to fear, to be suspicious of, but only for as long as they could be entertained by him. Once they left the building, he was nothing to them. Once they left the building, he would be nothing at all.

They whispered in his wake: _“no one said he was a kid”_ and _“who gives a shit, he’s a fucking criminal”_ to his retreating back. Quiet laughter followed him past the front row; _“can’t even walk on his own to his damn execution, the little bastard.”_ Had he been in his right mind, he would have shouted back at them; as it was, the days had exhausted the fight right out of his bones.

He followed in a haze as the officers shoved him atop a raised pedestal before the judge’s bench—he was the entertainment, after all, everyone had to be able to see him. They pushed him to his knees, held his shackled hands far enough behind his back so he could be secured in place with a heavy metal rod, nothing to do but avoid crossing gazes with anyone else, especially not Naomi’s somehow pitying stare as she noiselessly followed her comrades back to their post at the doors.

The military branches’ designated seating areas stood at the very edge of his peripherals, close enough that he could make out the hard set of the Garrison’s Dot Pixis steeling his spine, the bored expression of Nile Dawk as the rest of the Military Police superiors chatted behind him. The Survey Corps’ assigned section, closest to his left side, stood curiously empty in the otherwise crowded room. It was difficult to tell if that was a calming thought or not, if the three of them were skipping out on making him a spectacle or if there was something else the matter.

He would have joined them, Jean thought with a sick feeling in his stomach. If his world wasn’t going to end in a cold room full of strangers thirsty for his blood, if he’d never walk on his ruined ankle again, he would have joined them. Would have worn those fucking wings on his back and thought every damn time of how much Eren Jaeger would have been laughing at him from the afterlife when he slipped the cloak over his shoulders, of how Marco would look at him with swelling pride.

A flurry of movement happened away from his unseeing eyes: the clatter of a door closing, of footsteps on the stony ground. A throat cleared above, and Jean slowly lifted his eyes to the man now occupying the judge’s bench. The eyes that stared back at him were cold, emotionless. One had to be if they were the man in charge of all three military branches.

Commander-in-Chief Darius Zacklay cleared his throat, adjusting the small stack of papers ahead of him. He didn’t break eye contact for one brief second as he hushed the room.

“Silence,” he said in a dark, booming voice that quieted the hordes of people chattering under their breath. In the wake of his words, the courtroom fell into eerie stillness; Jean almost preferred the din of chatter to the deafening silence. “Let us begin. You are Jean Kirschstein, yes?”

Cold eyes stared at Jean over a crisp sheet of paper. He nodded minutely, throat aching with a heavy swallow.

“A soldier who vowed his life to serve the king.”

The knife in his chest twisted, sharp. Jean barely choked out a, “Y-yes, sir.”

It had never been about the king. It was always about his mother, about Marco, about his own damn self. Not that he owed any of the truth to this man, though, not while he stared him down with disapproving eyes that said enough about his own personal opinions of Jean’s actions to make up for any words lost between them.

“Because of the circumstances of your case, you will not be tried by the usual court proceedings. The ultimate decision, whether you live or die,” and Commander Zacklay’s voice iced sickly, churning the pit of Jean’s already soured stomach, “will be mine.”

A sharp breath was drawn somewhere behind Jean’s back; he didn’t have to turn to recognize the gasp that followed every childhood injury he’d ever gotten, every bit of bad news—and some of the good—that he’d fallen upon in life.

 _Don’t watch this, Mom,_ Jean thought miserably. He willed it to her without so much as turning to face her; couldn’t handle the look on her face as she realized this could be the very last time she laid eyes on her son. _Please don’t watch me die._

She wouldn’t leave, though; that he already knew. She would stick by his side even after the bullet entered his brain, hold him close as he gasped his final breath. That was who she was. She loved so damn hard that no matter how much he wanted to spare her the suffering and the heartache, no matter how much he wanted her to believe he was a monster who didn’t deserve to be mourned, she would hold him—physically, mentally, in that infinitely vast heart of hers—long after he was gone.

“Do you have any objections?”

The dark voice pulled Jean back from the depths of his mind again. With hot, stinging tears gathered in his eyes, he shook his head.

“No, sir.”

There was no fight left inside of him. Even there, with everyone watching him, waiting for the satisfaction of his murder, the will to thrash against his chains, to fight back, to _live_ was lost. He was just too fucking tired.

“Obedient,” Commander Zacklay remarked with a complacent sneer. “Well, then. Jean Kirschstein, you stand accused of the murder of Trainee Corps Cadet Eren Jaeger, and of treason against the king for the premature disposal of a potential military ally. How do you plead?”

The empty Survey Corps seating area tauntingly at his side, his mother behind him, Jean didn’t spare a glimpse anywhere but his battered legs as he answered, quiet but firm: “Guilty.”

The eerie silence descended into a cacophony of gasps, sighs, shouts. The same people who had been laughing minutes before at his injuries and his limp turned to quiet murmurs: _“well shit, he’s not that bad is he?”_ , _“can’t’ve meant to do it, could he?”_ , _“ain’t he just a little one?”_

Zacklay shuffled his papers again, unaffected. He stared at Jean over the rim of his glasses, coldly patient.

“You are aware, Mr. Kirschstein,” he spoke measuredly, “that the punishment for such a crime is execution at the hands of the Military Police’s firing squad.”

Jean nodded, weak. “Yes, sir.”

“And because of the circumstances surrounding your case, you will be immediately convicted of this crime, with no further trial?”

Again, “Yes, sir.”

The commander showed hesitance for the first time since he’d come through the old wooden doors. Being stared in the face by a teenager not unafraid of death, but now uncaring, apathetic, his vision behind thick glasses was less focused and more far-off. He was looking at the crowd, at their reactions, not at the boy at his feet who had lost himself.

He steeled once more, though, and gestured to the guards lining the room to come forward.

A heavy inhale, and he spoke: “Jean Kirschstein, I hereby find you guilty of the murder of Eren Jaeger, and for treason against the king. For your crimes, the sentence is death; you will be taken to the Military Police firing range at once. Court is adjourned.”

A sob rang throughout the room, and Jean couldn’t tell whether or not it was his own. Every sight, sound, and feeling before him blended into one cavernous, grey hole. He was only dimly aware of the officers surrounding him when they yanked the metal rod out from behind his back and hauled him to pathetically unsteady feet, practically dragging him through the opening between the rows of benches while a sea of eyes he couldn’t differentiate from one another watched the spectacle with sick fascination.

Except one pair of eyes that Jean could never not recognize, golden hazel just like his own and filled to the brim with red veins, shining tears. He lifted a hand to wave at his mother, a final goodbye, but remembered all too late that they were still shackled behind his back, metal digging into his spine as the police guards shoved him along.

They exited the courtroom into the foyer, barely populated like life was going on as it should. People running errands and Military Police members doing their duties like a fifteen-year-old boy wasn’t about to die on their premises, under their orders. A few people watched with mild curiosity as the guards shoved Jean along, most looking only for a moment before turning their eyes away like they hadn’t meant to look in the first place.

One family stood motionless in the center of the foyer: two parents, two identical young boys at their feet, and a little girl no more than four years old wrapped up in her mother’s arms.

A single tear escaped as Jean shut his eyes tight over the image of dark freckles on all of their wet cheeks, the unmistakable stationery of a death certificate clutched in the father’s hand.

 

* * *

 

There was no ritual about it, no finesse. The guards stopped in front of a door and shoved him through, outside, where another group of five officers already stood waiting, rifles in hand.

The firing range stood just beyond the doorway, lit by the early summer sun—the first natural light to warm Jean’s sallow skin in days. In a week, the range would be full of new recruits training with the same guns strapped to the officers’ backs, the bright and shining next generation of Military Police preparing for their careers on the very same field he would prepare for his final breath.

It was the thought that struck the most fear in his bones. The image of Sasha innocently loading her gun in a place that had once held the blood of a dying boy; Connie’s practice targets placed over where someone’s brains had been blown out. People he had grown up with, grown to love being fed lies and cover-ups for their entire lives about the nobility and grace of the Military Police. How many recruits had trained on the deathbed of innocent people? How many had it been, if Erwin Smith himself had been actively fighting against the practice?

He imagined naïve thirteen-year-old Marco the first day of training, innocently proclaiming his dedication to the king; imagined again sixteen-year-old Marco, gone forever, never to know the truth about what went on behind the closed doors of their headquarters.

“You stupid or what?” an officer barked close to Jean’s ear, tearing him out of his own thoughts. Collins’ voice was too familiar, too reminiscent of the brief hope he’d had of being free not two hours before. “I said, _face the fucking wall_.”

Defiance crept up Jean’s throat like bile, thick and hot. For as guilty as he felt over Eren, these people deserved guilt too. “Why, don’t wanna look into my face while you kill a child?” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“Ah, so he _does_ have some fight in him,” Collins snipped back. The sharp end of his rifle jabbed into the base of Jean’s spine, a stinging jolt left in its wake. It pushed Jean into the wall, just to rid himself of the pain. “Thought so. Maybe if you shut up, _murderer_ , this won’t hurt so bad.”

The last thing Jean would ever see would be the cold brick of the building; the last he smelled, the thick summer air; the last he heard, the deafening fire of five rifles all at once.

And as the first bullet breached his spine with a crack that fell on unhearing ears, Jean felt a strange sort of longing. The final thought that echoed through his mind was loud and clear.

_Marco, we’ll be together again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fourth: the second arc starts in two weeks (!!) with two chapters and the fic soundtrack don't beat me up i love you


	12. interlude: 2000 years from now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to arc 2, where everything is made up and the points don't matter
> 
> not only is this a double update, but i've made a [fic soundtrack](http://8tracks.com/brennaiscool/you-were-a-child-who-was-made-of-glass) that covers both the first and second arcs because i'm bad at being patient and waiting for things (and here's a [tumblr link](http://ondistantships.tumblr.com/post/130909037333/in-honor-of-tomorrow-starting-the) to it)
> 
> thank you for the comments and the love, i hope you enjoy ~~my pride and joy~~ the second arc!

They called it the Dark Ages. Two hundred years of human history completely wiped away with no traces left behind but broken remnants of what had once been vast stone walls, the ashes and wreckage of the cities of a forgotten civilization inside of them.

Each expedition came back fruitless; the furthest any one trip had gotten to finding an answer to why the world had seemingly stopped for two centuries 250 years before the turn of the first millennium had been the initial discovery of the walls themselves. All signs—artifacts found buried beneath hundreds of years’ worth of  dust and dirt, skeletal corpses dug into shallow graves, remains of once-great ships littered at the bottom of the Atlantic—pointed to a mass exodus of cultures across the globe to the mysterious walls in the mid-700’s. After that, just as they called it, darkness.

Theories sprung up from even the most academic of sources: pestilence, colonization, rapture, mind control. Not a soul could understand what attracted people from all corners of the world to an otherwise remote stretch of central Europe, why the ever-fabled walls had been erected in the first place, why nothing beyond them seemed to even be a part of human civilization for two lifetimes.

Had they known, maybe the world would have blinked an eye when the small kingdom of Sina’s civil war brought them to the point of erecting high stone walls, dividing the kingdom in two to keep their warring population at bay. Had the secrets of the enigmatic walled nation been uncovered, maybe then someone would have noticed when history began to repeat, over and over.

Had they understood that the one journal among the wreckage of the walled world, brushed off as the final unhinged thoughts of an elderly person and pushed alongside other futile discoveries, contained the answer to all they needed to know.

 

* * *

 

_To you, 2,000 years from now:_

_We won. We won, but this is not the end. This kind of peace cannot last. It will happen again. We cannot possibly undo what my father has done, not in this lifetime, but you can. You will_.

_There was a story my sister told me not long before I lost her, about a divided kingdom, the light and the dark. They had been at odds for so long, humanity turned on themselves, their only common enemy left. But there was an uprising, starting with two people of the light and of the dark, and then of their allies, friends, family. It was them, all of them, who reunited the divided halves. It was a story of hard work, but also brotherhood, trust, solidarity._

_She only told it once before our father ordered her never to speak of it again, and even then, she had turned around behind his back and winked like she knew something she maybe shouldn’t have._

_You must forgive me if this all sounds nonsensical; my mind is not what it once was. I never thought I’d grow old, but here I am, and here she is with me, my love and my heart. At least there is that. I hope you find her too, wherever you are. I hope you find them all._

_H.R._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hit the next chapter button to continue~


	13. something so wrong doing the right thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case you missed it in the interlude, [here is the fic soundtrack](http://8tracks.com/brennaiscool/you-were-a-child-who-was-made-of-glass) and a [tumblr link to it](http://ondistantships.tumblr.com/post/130909037333/in-honor-of-tomorrow-starting-the) (and in case you missed the interlude, click the previous chapter button)

** 2015 **

If the smoke filtering through the cracked windows of the library is anything to be alarmed by, no notice is paid to it. A page flips, careful fingers follow words across marred paper that still shines in the light from between the half-drawn curtains. The old radio in the corner spits disjointed words among static, somber piano notes: _“the king’s failing health—no heir—previously unheard of daughter—ascend to the thro—”_

Heart pounding in his chest for reasons unrelated to the grey wisps seeping in with the thick, early autumn heat, his jaw trembles as his fingers trace, lips form around the words he’s been aching for, nineteen years in the making. “ _‘Two people,’_ ” his quivering voice reads along, barely above a whisper, “ _‘of the light and of the dark.’_ ”

The curls of smoke have subsided from beside him, not that he’s noticed, even as footsteps thud against ruined carpeting and stop right before his folded legs. Only does he take note when a quick, dark hand plucks the book from between his fingers and lifts it from his line of sight.

“Ymir!” Jean gripes, reaching fruitlessly upwards as the book dangles precariously from two long fingers.

The girl above him flips the book into the palm of her hand, grin stretching from one pointed cheekbone to the next. “ _‘My love and my heart’_!” her sharp-toned voice rings sarcastically, overdramatic around the words that had been both so heavy and so light in his chest. The cigarette held between her right canines bobs up and down with every acerbic word. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo!”

_“Ymir!”_

She flips the book shut, toying with the spine as dark eyes flick over the front cover. “What kind of romance novel bullshit are you _reading_ , squirt?”

With some difficulty, Jean hoists himself up from the sticky carpeting and onto unsteady feet. He leans heavily on a cart to secure himself enough to swipe the book back from her mocking hands.

“Call me squirt again and die,” he says flatly. “It’s not a romance novel, it’s—”

“ _The Kingdom That Time Forgot: What We Know About the Ruins of the Walls_ ,” Ymir reads off of the cover, half questioningly. Her eyes are still sharp, but there’s a trace of a smile beneath it. She takes a drag from her cigarette and exhales the heavy smoke away from both of their faces before putting it out on the edge of the metal cart with a sigh. “Every time I think I got one of your weird interests down, you shit out a new one. What happened to painting, pipsqueak?”

“It’s just interesting,” Jean murmurs self-consciously. “I still like painting. I don’t like _paying_ for supplies I can’t afford, and when your shitty income comes from a library—”

“You decide to become a conspiracy historian?”

Jean glares at her. “You learn new things. Can’t all work in a factory, now, can we?” He gestures at one leg while he smooths a finger over the spine she’d nearly cracked, then holds the book close to his chest. “And don’t think for a second that pipsqueak is better than squirt.”

Ymir grins the same Cheshire cat grin that’s inked in permanent carmine over her collarbone. She’d gotten it done the first time he’d leant her _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ with the straight-faced sentiment that she _was_ the stupid cat. “You’re so _tiny_ , though.”

“I’m barely shorter than you,” is Jean’s feeble reply. He can feel her eyes, knows she’s trying to map out the visible lumps of his ribcage. He billows his jacket around his thin body as he slowly bends to pick up the small stack of books at his feet, but his hand hesitates over them, reluctant to scoop them up so quickly. The old tome still clutched in his other palm practically begs him to go on.

Jean makes brief eye contact with Ymir, who’s raising one eyebrow at him.

“Um,” he says. “Wh-what are you here for?”

Ymir shrugs. “S’five o’clock, you’re supposed to be clocked out, and I’m hungry. We oughta get home before the Terrible Triplets eat _us_ for dinner.” She watches him waffle over whether or not to pick up the books and some kind of realization washes over her face. “Oh my _god_ , you’re actually really into this.”

“I…” Jean sighs, dropping to sit down again. His shoulders deflate, and he drops the book to the floor. “I want answers that no person here is gonna be able to give me. It was worth a shot.”

Ymir plops herself next to him, a heavy noise that sends the familiar wave of anxiety pulsating down Jean’s back. “You and your answers,” she says flatly. “You know we ain’t getting any sort of answers living out here. It’s a marvel you and I even learned to _read_ in a place like this.”

Her arms gesture openly at their bleak surroundings. The decrepit library around them is right out of the kind of films meant to scare the average person, all molding ceilings and walls scarred with deep cracks never fixed from earthquakes and storms long past. The carpet sticks with every step, too stained to even properly identify what exactly has dyed the floor in dark reds and browns.

They’re used to it, by now; the whole town is this way anymore. Outer District, Sina: the only place where “the sky is blue” is not an obvious truth, rather a blatant fallacy. The sky’s been grey as long as any of them can remember, blackened by the smog of the factories that line the perimeter of the place, flooding the skyline with power lines and slate-colored blocks of buildings.

“I can’t just accept this shit,” Jean mumbles into his book. “It’s… I don’t want to.”

If Ymir was one to show sympathy on her face, she would be showing it. Instead, she huffs and _thunks_ her head against the wall behind, the closest to an admission of understanding as she’ll get. “None of us _want_ to, ‘cept maybe Frost Queen and her idiots back home. Any whiff of change and they go chasin’ their tails back between their legs like good little citizens.”

Jean nudges her with his shoulder. “I don’t think that’s how that metaphor goes.”

“Fuck you, nerd. I’m tryin’.” Ymir sighs and scrubs two hands over her face, the day’s grime over her dark freckles scrubbed up with them. “I’ll give ya five minutes before my stomach starts turning inside out on itself. Tell me about the thing.”

“The thing?”

She pokes the book in his palms with an elbow. “The kingdom shit. Tell me why I’m being stared in the face by a giant wall when I could go outside for the same view.”

“Um,” Jean stammers, suddenly self-conscious. It’s not that simple. The book, covered with a painted image of walls not unlike the ones that encircle the whole town, only crumbling and broken and barren, has already left him with more questions than he started out with. “C-come on, you don’t wanna know about this shit. You could get killed just for someone finding out you read this.”

“And yet here you are, reading it. Wild little rebel, you.”

“Fucking _shut up_ ,” he snorts, tension leaving his shoulders at his friend’s sly smile. “There’s just— _ugh_.” It’s hard to put into words without everything he wants to say pouring out, every twisting thought in his brain tripping over themselves in a race out of his mouth. Jean breathes in once to hold back the dam, reopens the book to the recreated journal page, and hands it over to Ymir.

The look on her face is hard to place, not that her expression is ever really in the realm of expected. Her fingers trace the same patterns of reproduced handwriting, and her lips nearly form around the same words, but in place of Jean’s wonder instead is almost melancholy. Ymir’s frown isn’t fully present, but there is a telltale pull on the corner of her lips, angled downward the more she reads on.

It’s eerie quiet for a moment, nothing but the radio flickering between music and news headlines once more: “ _should the king pass—controversial heir—Histori—more on this story tonight at seven o’clock.”_ The _snap_ of the book cover shutting abruptly nearly scares Jean out of his skin. He aims a particularly scathing glare Ymir’s way before he sees that she’s still got the same, almost forlorn look in her eyes as she stares at the closed cover.

But Ymir’s sly smirk is back before he can comment, and he won’t mention it out loud if it isn’t quite as sharp as she wants it to be. “So, what?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “You think this story is what’s gonna reunite this shithole?”

“ _No_. I mean. Not immediately? It—it could, if someone would take it seriously. Like—” Jean flips back to the page, tries to pretend he doesn’t see Ymir cringe out of the corner of his eye. “Right here. The ruins where they found the journal.” Fingers shaking, he points out a picture of a what must have once been a massive building, now just a crumbled foundation surrounded by broken brick. “It was a castle. They couldn’t have just been some random mad person, they were _royalty_.”

“I fail to see what that has to do with any of this shit, honestly,” Ymir grouses, turning her head away deliberately. “Who says this thing’s got to do with us anyhow? Being royalty doesn’t mean this person knew any more than anyone else—shit, our own fuckin’ royals are living proof of that.”

“It’s a better answer than nothing,” Jean gripes, shoving his elbow into her side, trying to rid her of whatever sourness the book brought up. “I don’t get it all the way yet, okay? I admit it. I’m still working on it.”

“Well, throw the towel in for the day, because I am about to _annihilate_ some dinner right now.” Ymir pulls herself to her feet, clearly done with the subject, and she offers a hand down as Jean—very reluctantly—gathers the books back into his arms. He takes her hand grudgingly, hauling himself back onto shaky legs with the help of her tugging. “Where’s your cane at?”

“It’s in the stacks where I found the books, I’ll get it,” Jean huffs, hobbling on his bad ankle towards the next aisle down, marked with a large _RESTRICTED_ sign and blocked off with a chest-height gate he has to fumble to get unlocked. The flimsy cane is hooked over one row of shelves, and he tugs it off as he carefully slides the books back into their place, then makes his way to where Ymir’s waiting for him in the front doorway.

The sky is still grey, steadily growing darker and darker until eventually, at some point soon, it will be pitch black, devoid of stars hidden behind the thick smog. Jean and Ymir slowly make their way back to their apartment complex, moving only at the speed his ankle lets them.

“Hey,” he says into the cooling air. “Um, don’t tell Annie and them about that.”

“What, the thing with that old-ass book?  They’ll probably think it’s all a joke anyway,” Ymir answers, shrugging as she stares at the starless sky. She pounds her right fist against her chest in a half-assed mockup of a salute. “But yeah, whatever, scout’s honor and shit.”

Silence falls between them as they mosey between rows of identical block apartment buildings, looking in the colorless light for number 104. Jean’s teeth grit on a question that he should bite back, but he notices the look on Ymir’s face—more contemplative than he can recall seeing her for a long time—and he lets it tumble out.

“Do _you_ think it’s all a joke?”

Ymir blinks at him once, twice. “Shit, I dunno. It’s… interesting, I guess. I want to believe some force will make everyone believe that all that shit’s about us, but living here? I don’t know how that kind of thing is possible.” She breathes, and Jean can see her fingers scrabbling against the pockets of her loose jeans for a pack of cigarettes that isn’t there anymore, that they both know they ran out of money to afford. “What about you?”

“I want to believe in it,” Jean says, quiet. “It would explain things better. Why we’re here, what we can do about it, if we can—”

“If you say ‘if we can get to the Inner District,’ I’ll—”

“I know,” he murmurs. “That’s impossible. You don’t have to tell me.”

The silence sinks again, heavier than before, but building 104 is fast approaching, the light in the third window glowing dim behind thin curtains, and Jean prepares himself to hoist his body up, step by step, with his cane. Ymir’s hand steady and still silent on his back for support, they slowly creep up, one by one, until their front door is in view.

Behind it, a small spread of food sits on a ragged old blanket on the floor: a plastic sack of fruits, a loaf of sliced bread, a brown bag of some kind of food wrapped in yellow paper, all lined around the edges with mismatched candles burning down to the wicks. Around it all, three figures sit on crossed legs: one bulky and blond, one weedy and dark-haired, the last small and platinum.

“I can’t believe we managed this,” Reiner snorts to himself, unwrapping a paper from the brown bag. “Fucking _tacos_. How’d you manage _tacos_ , An?”

Annie flicks her bangs out of icy eyes. “Because I’m not a hulking idiot like you,” she says flatly. “Maybe keep your damn mouth shut sometime.”

It’s with a mouthful of tortilla and beef that Reiner waves a hand above his head, gesturing at Jean and Ymir. “We’re eatin’ good tonight! Annie managed to lift us some tacos on the way home from work!”

“Oh joy,” Ymir says flatly, removing her hand from Jean’s back and joining the circle around the blanket. She snatches a wrapper from the floor and takes a large bite out of the taco, mumbling through a mouthful, “Someone else’s food.”

Jean stops himself before the blanket, collapsing into an armchair that has seen much better days. He barely has time to prop his foot up on one of the arms before Ymir simultaneously tosses both a taco and an apple his way.

“We have paychecks, you know,” he murmurs before taking a small bite of apple. “We can buy food instead of taking it.”

Annie snorts derisively in his direction. “Would you rather make rent and eat food we lifted, or pay for our own food and be homeless?”

“We already can’t afford electricity for the month,” Jean says under his breath. The candles around the blanket seem to flicker at the thought. Annie glares at him from the floor. “I’m just saying you’re gonna get us caught one day.”

Turning around, Ymir gives him a gentle buff on his good leg. “Look at this innocent little baby. You know no one gives a shit about crime in the Outer District, so long as we abide by their stupid infiltration laws.”

Reiner nods in recognition. “We can kill each other, for all the king and his police care, so long as we don’t touch their precious little babies on the inside.”

Something clenches right in the center of Jean’s chest, clawing its way up his tightened throat. Memories he never got to retain, of being born to a woman who he always imagined would have cared for him with all of her heart had he not been taken from her arms within minutes of his birth and sent to an orphanage in the Outer District. A woman who lived just on the other side of the walls and could still be his mother, had the king not barred him and everyone who lived on his side of the walls from ever entering the Inner District.

Ymir shoots Reiner a dark look over her shoulder. The fist that hit Jean on the knee instead gives a friendly pat that goes unnoticed by the other eyes in the room.

“Fucking infiltration laws,” she steers the subject back around. “As if we’re a bunch of goddamned undercover agents and not, I don’t know, human beings who don’t wanna live in squalor anymore.”

Jean aims a weak, thankful smile at the side of her head and finishes his meal in silence.

 

* * *

 

Their last lighter ran out of butane with the last wick lit before dinner, so Jean carries a single, potted candle outside with him after dinner. He and Annie are the only ones of the five people living in the cramped apartment who don’t smoke and aren’t using up the end of Bertholdt’s last pack, but he insists on taking the candle, if only to warm one cold hand in the chill of nightfall while the other steadies his cane beneath him.

The candle’s light illuminates the walls around them as they walk through the graffitied back alleys of the neighborhood. A faded help wanted sign lists open factory jobs no doubt vacated by employees lost in accidents, another advertises a room for rent in the next block of apartments. The last poster at the mouth of the alley stares at him with glowing green eyes on a sinewy face, with pointed ears mostly hidden under the cover of a mop of dark hair. Beneath the creature’s exposed, lipless teeth, the bolded reminder to **REPORT ROGUES!** sits printed in blood red font.

Jean shrugs away from the eerie gaze of the humanoid creature _thing_ on the sign and back out from the alleyway, where Reiner is already stacking wood pilfered from his lumber factory job into a small pile in the middle of a patch of scorched dirt. He raises an open palm, and Annie slides him her long, white candle so he can ignite the pile.

With no heating, no electricity for the month, and no fireplace in the apartment, they have to make do with what little warmth they can get; a campfire in a clearing not a hundred yards from the dividing wall is what they have to settle for more often than not. The boys and Ymir take turns lighting their cigarettes over Jean’s candle, and he keeps it cupped in his hands as they settle onto the ground surrounding the flames.

Conversation between them on these nights follows the same pattern: Reiner and Ymir loudly grouse about work, puffing exasperatedly from their cigarettes, Bertholdt interjects every so often, Annie stays mostly silent as she stares at the empty sky, and Jean bites his lip and watches the flame in his hands flicker out in the breeze. Never a change, much like their lives: wake up, work, hope for enough dinner for all of them to eat, sleep, do it all over again.

In the middle of Ymir’s rant about some guy at work knocking over her meticulous stack of freshly assembled chairs, Jean’s teeth unclench from around his lower lip, and he blinks in the firelight.

“Is this honestly it for us?”

Ymir is the first to look at him, almost a warning. The same look she’d given him when he made her promise not to tell Annie about what they’d talked about in the library.

Reiner is next to look over, thin eyebrows furrowed together. “What’re you even talking about?”

Annie’s eyes only flick over to him for a brief second before she keeps looking at the sky like she’s waiting for a star to peek out from between the layers of smoke.

Jean shrugs, rolling out his shoulders. The candle’s flame flickers, and his heavy breath nearly blows it out before it flicks weakly back to life.

“Don’t you ever feel like there’s something more for us than this?” he asks, mostly to the air. “Working in lumber yards, making furniture, sitting in the library attending to nothing because the few people here who _can_ read don’t have time to?”

Reiner and Bertholdt glance between themselves. “Where is this coming from, Jean?” Bertholdt asks, quiet and cautionary.

Ymir murmurs something to Jean that sounds like _“what happened to keeping this between us?”_ but it rolls right off of his shoulders. Nineteen years, he’s held his tongue on every errant thought that might put him out of the majority opinion, everything that’s held them in the cage that is the Outer District. Nineteen years, he’s resigned himself to a complacent life doing exactly what it is that the king and his Inner District government have always expected of the Outer District.

Jean looks hard at Bertholdt over the flames between them. Hazel eyes meet muddied green, and his teeth grit around a reply.

“You wanted to join the Military Police when we were kids, remember?”

Bertholdt averts his gaze. “Th—that’s not—”

“When we were kids, we didn’t know this place’s history,” Reiner counters. His arm stretches around Bertholdt’s shoulders, and the weedy boy curls just that much into his side. “This is just how shit is, and we can’t just dream it all away.”

“I’m not talking about dreaming it all away,” Jean says petulantly. “I’m saying we can _do_ something about it.”

“Like what?”

Reiner’s face is serious, almost uncharacteristically so. Small eyes bore into Jean’s face, imploring, judging. He wants no answer, not really. Jean knows that well enough that the three of them, for whatever reason, won’t dare touch the system that’s planned out so much of their lives already.

Jean sighs, cool breath blowing out the candle in his hands with an almost inaudible _hiss_ of extinguished flame, and his shoulders drop like they’ve been weighed down again.

“See, dreaming’s not getting anyone anywhere,” Reiner grits before his face contorts back into its usual sly smirk. “Besides, the districts have been separated so long, we don’t even have the same illnesses. They say that being in contact with us for too long can give those prissy bastards sicknesses our side of the wall’s built up immunity to for centuries now. That shit wouldn’t fly, amigo.”

Just when the noise level returns to its usual din of chatter in the wake of Jean’s realization, though, something he’d read about in passing rings through his ears.

“You’ve heard about the journal, haven’t you?”

All four sets of eyes shoot to him again. Ymir opens her mouth to say something, but snaps her jaw shut when Reiner meets eyes with Bertholdt, then Annie, and lets a snort echo under his breath.

“The journal,” he echoes dubiously. “What journal?”

“The—” Jean tries to compose his words. “The one they found in the ruins of the old walled kingdom.”

“The one that supposedly belonged to the old batty lady?” Reiner asks. Jean nods. “You don’t honestly believe that shit, do you?”

“I—”

“I mean, how _convenient_ that some explorer just ‘finds’ this thing sitting in a pile of rocks that have been studied for centuries.”

The urge to just bite his tongue again is there, so strong, but the shadow of the wall looming behind them is too dark tonight, too much of an overbearing presence tonight to just bask in the darkness of.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to believe it,” Jean says, a touch quieter than before. “That story, about the dark and the light—”

“Was probably thrown together by some conspiracy theorist who wanted their own story to go down in the history books like it was the real thing,” Reiner finishes, biting.

Jean ignores him, presses on louder and stronger than before. “What if _we_ —” He gestures around, at the wall and the other side of it, “—are the light and dark it talks about. What if _we’re_ the ‘you’ in 2,000 years?”

“I think part of all of us _wants_ to believe it,” Bertholdt murmurs from Reiner’s shoulder. Reiner and Annie’s eyes shoot to him, but he shrugs and they look away. “But it’s a fairy tale, Jean. If it wasn’t entirely made up by whoever wrote the journal, then it’s a myth at best.”

They’d read about old myths in school, all allegories for different things, life lessons. Icarus flew too close to the sun and lost his wings; Athena’s birth from Zeus’ forehead was the birth of knowledge and wisdom. Now, apparently, the people from the light and dark are nothing more than a tale of teamwork and unity made up to explain why the old walls fell to ruin.

As much as he doesn’t want it to make sense, it does, and Jean sinks against the wall behind his back.

“I don’t know why you’re set on staying here,” he tries without any real bite to it. As much as he wants to be on the other side of the wall, for the wall to be _gone_ , the fight is sapped out of him again, his teeth poised around the tip of his tongue once more. The unremembered, faceless mother he never got to have remains an idea rather than a person.

There’s a grumble in the dim light, and Jean doesn’t realize it’s coming from Annie until she whips her head over her shoulder to fix him with an arctic glare.

“If you want to leave, then leave,” she bites. The wall and the bonfire cast shadows that look almost skeletal over the sharp lines of her nose and cheekbones. Jean opens his mouth to respond, but she doesn’t give him the time to before she’s speaking again. “But don’t expect us to reject any impulses to kill you.”

Jean’s stomach drops without preamble. He can almost feel Ymir’s hackles raise at her side, but she doesn’t make a noise beyond the routine inhale-exhale of thick smoke.

“You don’t get it,” he tries, shaky and unsure. “If this is a real thing, the kingdom can reunite.”

Annie snorts incredulously. “You actual naïve _child_ , do you honestly believe that _you_ or _any_ of us are the ones from that journal? Never mind _me_ killing you—with that mindset, the Military Police will gladly do it themselves.”

She looks as if she wants to go on, but Annie’s eyes lose their focus on his face, straying instead over his shoulder, farther off. Jean follows her line of vision to another figure standing at the base of the wall, until it looks once to the left, then the right, and sits down, curled in on itself.

Annie huffs out a measured breath, and Jean watches her carefully.

“Who is that?” he tries in a quieter voice than before.

Annie doesn’t shift; it’s Ymir who finally speaks up.

“He’s a rogue,” she says in a hushed tone. “Comes ‘round here sometimes, passing through the walls.”

The poster at the mouth of the alleyway’s soulless eyes bore into him from behind. Jean looks at the creature on the poster, then at the scrawny boy crouched in the shadows of the looming stone wall. No similarity between the two can be found, other than the shaggy, dark brown hair that hangs just past the jawline of both the monster and the boy.

Rogues, as they’d been taught about in school, aren’t scraggly-looking boys with skinny arms that hide their eyes from the world; rather, they’d been told in lesson after lesson that rogues were subhumans that lurked in the shadows to kill innocent people. People born with the entitlement of the Inner District and the cold ruthlessness of the Outer, immune to the supposed diseases that kept the walls apart. They were the enemy of the kingdom, weren’t supposed to be allowed to live past ten years old, as far as the king and his army of trigger-happy Military Police were concerned.

The last he’d heard of a rogue living past their expected age in either of the districts was in a history book fifteen years past its publication date: a nameless boy who had disappeared in the midst of his capture by the Military Police, who’d lost both his parents _and_ his aunt and uncle in his struggle to get away.

The carmine _REPORT ROGUES!_ stares tauntingly from the adjacent wall, and Jean meets its glowing eyes for long enough that they burn into his own. He casts a hard look at Annie, still frozen in place, and tries not to make his glare too obvious.

“Aren’t you supposed to report them?” he grits at her, right off of the poster and sour on his tongue, but Annie doesn’t move still. Her eyes are far-off, their expression unreadable.

Ymir answers in her place once more. “Do you _really_ want the government all up in our business?” she offers, barely laughing to herself. “One peep from us and our lives are gonna be a nonstop stream of _‘you were harboring him, weren’t you? don’t lie to us, you fucking Outers!’_ —no thank you. Long as he’s not harming _us_ , I don’t care what he does over here.”

The boy by the wall shifts, his shaggy head lifting from between his arms, and the wild-eyed stare that locks onto Jean’s face seems eerily familiar.

 

* * *

 

The apartment is all but pitch black when they return that night, but it doesn’t matter much, anyway; Annie falls right asleep in the living room, Reiner and Bertholdt not far behind, and Ymir and Jean hole themselves up in the scarcely furnished back room they’ve shared since they moved into the building two years back.

Lit only by the dying flame of Jean’s candle, Ymir curls herself into her nest of blankets in one corner, and he settles carefully onto the rickety futon he’d bought with his first paltry library paycheck in the other. They’re quiet as they each pull their jackets off and toss them into the middle of the floor, but Ymir peeks out from beneath her blankets and stares long and hard at him across the room.

“What,” Jean murmurs flatly. “You’re creeping me out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ymir dismisses. “You’re thinking.”

It’s not a question, rather a pointed statement. Her tone rises on the words, and Jean can’t shrug it off with the way she’s looking at him.

“And?” he half-confirms.

“ _And_ ,” Ymir continues for him, “you know this kid might not be all gung-ho about you approaching him in the middle of the night when he’s _literally_ on the run for his life from the MP.”

He blinks, taken aback, over what little light there is left in the room. “What do you—”

“The way you were looking at him like he was an escape and the way Annie was looking at him like she was imagining how his head would look on the mantle were in two completely different planes,” Ymir shrugs. “I’m just saying. If you’re gonna skip walls with him, be careful.”

The futon creaks under his weight as Jean leans over, closer to Ymir’s side of the room, but she closes her eyes and is asleep—for real or not—before he can even ask her what she means.

When he slips out of the bedroom half an hour later, he leaves a small sachet of coins on the edge of her mattress, a scratched note beside them: _Put these to good use. Asshole._

 

* * *

 

It’s different outside without a candle to light the way, dimmer and more foreboding, like something will pop out of the shadows at any moment, but Jean staggers down the same path as before, guided by the waning smell of the bonfire that’s still smoking just slightly when he reaches it once again.

He doesn’t want to admit it’s scary out here on his own, but without Reiner or Ymir—someone bigger, sturdier, ready to take on any potential threat that crosses their path—Jean’s eyes flit anxiously back and forth across the area, waiting. For what, he doesn’t know, but he takes a few minutes just to survey, fingers fisted in the ratty, too-long sleeves of his hoodie.

Ymir’s warning rings through Jean’s ears more times than he’d ever admit to her. In hindsight, rushing out to find a mysterious fugitive guided by nothing but a desire to figure out how to get out of this place and the vague notion that he’s _seen_ this kid somewhere before wasn’t his best idea, but complacency has done him no good in life—it’s lost him his old job, most of the mobility in his right foot, any likely chance of ever meeting his mother.

And so it’s with a pulse thrumming in overtime that he sees the boy crouching by the wall once more, messy head buried in the thin arms crossed over his folded knees. He’s so _small_ up close, smaller even than Jean and more so when he’s curled up like he is. The Rogue poster looms menacingly behind the both of them, and Jean still can’t find a similarity between this scared boy and the caricature pasted on every wall in the Outer District.

Approaching him, though, as small as the kid may be, is nerve-wracking enough to send anxious tremors throughout Jean’s whole body. One wrong move and he could be dead—this kid could kill him, small but mighty like Annie, or the Military Police could strike him down from their cushy offices raised along the wall. He walks on quiet feet and a softly thumping cane, and it only takes on misplaced jab of the cane’s rubber bottom on the ground to catch the boy’s attention.

His head whips up, and his eyes are brilliantly green, even in the darkness. Even when his pupils shrink and his thick eyebrows shoot up behind shaggy bangs.

“I’m—I’m not doing—” he stammers. One hand brushes through his hair, almost as if he’s trying to hide behind a curtain of waves. Jean gives the boy a moment to gather himself, and when he realizes that Jean’s not there to kill him—at least not yet—he breathes a long sigh and his brows furrow together. “What do you want,” the boy says flatly instead.

His face is so _familiar_. Jean swears he’s seen it before, though he can’t place when and where or _how_. The dark glare is unmistakable, even the crooked teeth visible behind his parted lips. Jean has _seen_ this look, he _knows_ it, and even the harsh, defensive curl of his stomach in response to it is familiar.

 _“What?”_ the boy presses again.

“Wh-what are you—” Jean’s throat is too dry, and though he swallows the lump inside down low enough to speak, it still doesn’t come out quite right. “What are y-you doing?”

“I’m just enjoying a _lovely_ evening, can’t you tell?” the boy spits acidly. “And sit _down_ , you’re about as subtle as a wrecking ball right now, fuck.”

“Yeah, says _you_ , sitting here huddled like a wounded goddamned animal,” Jean hisses back, no clue where it even came from. He can’t even remember the last time he snapped at someone who wasn’t Ymir.

With a grunt, he lowers himself next to the boy anyway, even though the distinct urge to turn away or sock him in the face or _something_ fills his body in a way he’s both unused to and completely accustomed  with.

“How do I know you’re not gonna report me, huh?”

The boy’s voice is quieter now, almost timid. If Jean knew him any better, he might think that’s fear making his voice shake just slightly.

“Because—” Jean tries to remember Ymir’s reasoning. “I don’t want the government up my ass?”

The boy snorts. “Typical,” he says. “Though I do look pretty dashing on that poster.”

His head tilts in the direction of the eerie humanoid creature snarling at them from the tattered sign on the wall facing them.

A thousand questions fill Jean’s head; stupidly, the first to tumble out is, “That’s you?”

The boy looks taken aback for a second, long enough for Jean to notice, before he schools his expression back to careful indifference.

“Probably a weird coincidence,” he says only half-confidently. “A trillion color combinations they can come up with and the poster still ends up a brown dude with dark hair and green eyes.”

The rest of the questions swirl through Jean’s thoughts, all too jumbled together to ask. He only makes a quiet noise of recognition and leans his head against the cold stone behind and closes his heavy eyelids loosely.

“I’m Eren,” says the boy, and Jean’s eyes flutter back open. _Eren_. It suits him.

“Jean,” he replies. “So, uh, _Eren_ …”

Eren blinks slowly over to him. “What?”

“There’s no possible way to say this without seeming like an asshole, but uh…” Jean pauses, mulling over his words. “If you’re, _y’know_ —”

“I’m a rogue. Just say it the offensive way, goddamn.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jean edges. “Then, um, what are you doing here?”

Eren’s snort is indelicate, wild as his bright eyes and messy hair. “M’too fucked up for the Inner District, too fucked up for the Outer District, so I skip between ‘em.”

“A- _ha_!”

Eren’s eyes go wide once more at Jean’s shout. He shoves two hands over Jean’s mouth, a hard set to his brows, and hisses, _“Don’t. Be. Fucking. Loud,”_ with a cursory glance over his shoulder to the raised Military Police post along the wall.

He eases his hands off of Jean’s mouth, and Eren quietly asks, “So _what_ was that outburst about?”

Jean makes a show of wiping his mouth, if only to piss Eren off—he doesn’t quite understand that urge yet, but it’s better than quietly taking the shit Annie and Reiner throw at him. “You skip through the walls,” he says. “ _How?_ ”

“ _Fuuuck_ ,” Eren groans into his hands. “Pretend I didn’t say that, I just—”

He cuts himself off and lifts his head from his palms. Jean stares eagerly.

“I got careless,” Eren says flatly.

“Well, it’s out there now.”

“You were much quieter when you were with your friends toni—”

“They’re not my friends,” Jean interrupts, a hard edge to his voice. “Well, Ymir, but—no. The rest of them, no. And you’re changing the subject.”

Eren groans again, high and whiney. “ _Ugh_. There’s a guard who takes the late shift, lazy as hell, doesn’t pay a cent of attention. Name’s Hitch. She gets on duty, that’s my okay to go. _Fuck_. Stop making me say things.”

Jean’s eyes are practically _sparkling_ with the new information, “Not a damn chance, oh my god. And you just go?”

“You _fucking_ —” Eren grunts. “There are gates near the MP stations, for commerce and whatever, transport trucks taking shit from your factories to their stores. The locks are easy as hell to pick if you know what you’re doing.”

“What about the sickness? We’re supposedly immune after so many years here, but everyone says we can infect the other side.”

“So many _questions_ ,” Eren says. “I don’t know if there’s truth to the rumor that rogues aren’t carriers. I just know that if there is or not, I’ve never infected anyone on the other side.”

“And on the other side—”

“This is your _last question_ , I swear to fucking god.”

Jean smirks too pleasantly at the irritated look on Eren’s face. “You’re close enough to people on the other side to be around them long enough to risk infection?”

Eren’s face is serious, though something behind his eyes shines bright and clear in the moonlight. “Yes,” he says measuredly. “I lived there before the Military Police tried to get rid of me almost a decade ago. I have… friends.”

 _Friends_ comes out of his mouth awkwardly, like it’s the wrong word, not the one he wants to use, but the admission is enough for Jean to ignore that while his mind races in overtime, because _there’s a way out, there are good people on the other side, this could be his chance_.

“You want to come with me,” Eren says like he already knows everything—he probably does. Jean doesn’t even have to answer the non-question. “I fucking knew it, it’s always like this with you—er, I mean, people like—”

Eren trails off uncomfortably. Jean still doesn’t notice.

He still doesn’t have to say a thing for Eren to reluctantly offer, “Look, I’ll take you with me for a _limited-ass time_ , so long as you keep your mouth shut and don’t fuck around with too many people on the other side. Someone catches the Outer sickness and _both_ districts will be an unending manhunt for months to come, and my life’ll be more of a living hell than it already is..”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes? The king will look for any excuse to fuck with the lessers to remind them who’s on top here.”

Jean shakes his head. “I mean about taking me.”

“Did I not just give you the terms and conditions?” Eren says flatly, but he cracks a slight smile before the end of the sentence can get out of his mouth all the way. “Come on, asshole, we gotta get you cleaned up before we’re out of here. Hitch should be on duty within the hour, and you’re way too much of a mess to fit in over there.”

 

* * *

 

Forty five minutes later, Jean’s face has been washed of any leftover grime, hair cleaned with cold well water, his old jacket and too-big pants swapped out for clean clothes stored in a backpack hidden in a barren alleyway half a block down the wall.

Clean clothes that, he’s come to notice only after putting them on, are fit for Eren’s shorter legs and not his long, spindly ones.

“Is this your idea of fitting in?” Jean hisses over Eren’s unhidden silent chuckling as they wait impatiently for Hitch to take her post for the night. “Because I’m sure nothing about this situation can be described as _fitting_.”

He tugs at the tight material of the pants, trying in desperate vain to cover his exposed ankles and the thick white scar running up the right one.

“Well shit, sorry I’m not a tailor with a whole clothing store at my disclosure,” Eren grouses at him. “They were a gift for me from M—uh, my friends, so don’t rip them with all that tugging, you ass.”

“Duly noted, but it must be hard for them to shop for an _infant_ without getting some funny looks,” Jean snipes, only to receive the back of Eren’s hand hard against his cheek. He might have deserved that one.

“Now shut up, I see something in the office.”

Jean follows Eren’s gaze up to the windows of the yellow-lit office at the wall, where the guard with the ridiculous bowl cut has now stood up from his seat and is stiffly saluting whoever’s come to stand behind him. He can almost _feel_ the irritation as the officer’s posture falls, his eye roll just barely visible from their position on the ground. Another guard, small with short waves of ashen blonde hair, glides past him with a smirk on her face and settles into the seat at the head of the office. Her feet prop up on the desk, and she tilts her head back with a sly grin before the man with the stupid hair huffs, turns on a heel, and leaves the room.

“Good ol’ Hitch,” Eren snorts, mostly to himself. “Once we can hear Marlowe’s steps leaving the office on the other side, we gun it on three, yeah? You need help on that leg, I got you.”

Eren presses an ear to the stone, keeping his breathing steady while Jean’s heart rate picks up to a maddening speed, the cane gripped bruisingly in his hand. Eren lifts his hand and counts down on his fingers: _one… two… three…_

He’s off like a bullet, and Jean keeps up with him with the only thoughts on his mind clear: _freedom, freedom, safety, escape, **Mom**_.


	14. the shadows will never find you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my apologies for the late upload, the last two weeks have been HELL for schoolwork and i never want to write an 8 page research paper about trade and commerce in the middle ages again let me tell you
> 
> i'm gonna be honest and say this uhhhh isn't my favorite chapter? my outline had too much going on for one chapter and i had to split it in half, so this is the more exposition-y and least plot-driven of the two parts and the ending is really abrupt. i'll probably still tweak it throughout the next couple of weeks as i work more on the second half and connect them better!

The sun’s first rays are already creeping over the horizon by the time Jean and Eren make it to their destination.

Jean has no clue where they are, what kind of buildings are even surrounding them, because his head has been so overstimulated with new _everything_ —all of the sights and sounds and smells imaginable—since they crossed the path between walls over an hour ago.

Inner District is both everything he imagined and nothing he ever dreamed could be possible. The roads are all clean, dark asphalt, paved along the sides with cobblestone and brick sidewalks. Spotless, shining cars and buses replace the Outer District’s rusted bikes and rickety old cabled trolleys, all flitting from pristine white building to pristine white building. This particular neighborhood is rife with thick green vines growing up the sides of homes, white fences built not to keep out like the chain-link of the Outer District, but for decoration, it seems. Rainbows of flowers fill planters attached to glowing streetlamps, and the last time Jean saw this much color in his _life_ was scribbling on an activity book with every crayon in the box when he was just a kid—even his more recent paintings couldn’t capture this kind of vibrancy.

What gets Jean’s attention the most, though, is the _sky_ —not a greyed-out, starless void hanging above like an iron curtain, but beginning to glow shades of pink and purple and gold around the edges of the twinkling deep blue of the night sky. There are still _stars_ out, sparkling overhead like they’d hung themselves up just to put on a show before Jean’s very eyes. Nineteen years of living and he’s never seen this many stars at once, especially this close to morning.

It’s the closest to magic he can ever recall feeling.

“Don’t see the sky much on the outside, do ya?” Eren asks ahead of him. His pace has slowed from its previous breakneck run, much to the relief of Jean’s throbbing foot. Now, he lets his shaggy hair fall down his neck as he cranes his head up to look at all of the homes sprawling around them.

“I don’t think I _ever_ have,” Jean answers honestly, wondrously. Each placement of his cane is heavier and harder than the last underneath his exhausted body, but he barely takes note anymore, not when there’s so much else around him to think about.

“Never?” Eren wonders, turning on a heel.

“Maybe when I was a little kid. You’ve seen the Outer District. The factory smog’s so thick, I think it was _once_ when there was a bad work season.”

Eren slows further, matching his steps to Jean’s. “I try not to stay for more than a night or two. Just when I’m being cautious about getting caught on this side.”

They fall into companionable silence, the only sound around their footfall, the steady thump of Jean’s cane, and the whistling of the wind through the air. The sun warms Jean’s sallow skin and he closes his eyes against its unfamiliar brightness.

Breaking the calm, Eren murmurs. “Growing up there’s gotta be _wonderful_ , I’m sure.”

“Even better when you’re living in an orphanage with a hundred other kids,” Jean says, a little bitterly.

“Shit,” Eren breathes, large eyes sizing up Jean in a way he’s not entirely sure if he’s comfortable about. He doesn’t note it, not when Eren’s lips twist into the briefest frown. “If it, ah, makes you feel a little less shitty, I lost my parents too.”

“I didn’t,” mumbles Jean. “Lose them, I mean. Far as I know, they’re alive—my mom at least, I don’t know anything about my dad. But she lives here.”

Eren’s eyebrows lift. “So you—”

“I was born here,” Jean finishes. “Got taken from my mom right after I was born from what I gather. Never even got to know her first name, just that ‘Kirschstein’ was her last, ‘cause that’s what’s on all my paperwork.”

Eren nods, silent, and takes a few more steps before he slows and pauses. “Not to make you think I’m avoiding the conversation, but um…” He gestures at the house he’s stopped himself in front of. “We’re here.”

It’s a smaller place than most of the houses they’ve passed, but the white gate still borders it, though its swinging door is shut and latched unlike all the others. The same vines grow along the front wall, and the only visible portion of the backyard—it has a _backyard_ —is a clothesline pinned full of freshly washed clothing in colors never available at the swap meets of the Outer District.

With wide eyes full of wonder and a mild amount of terror at who or _what_ could be lurking behind the front door of the house, what they could think of him, Jean follows Eren through the now unlatched gate, up the red brick pathway leading to the front door.

Eren knocks twice in a rhythm that seems too carefully planned out to be natural, then leans against the doorframe. Jean curls himself in the shadow of his inches-shorter body, his cane the only thing around to squeeze his anxiety out of.

When the door creaks, it’s just an inch or two first before it swings almost violently open and a pair of arms wind themselves around Eren’s shoulders. Jean can’t see much else but black hair and the oversized sleeves of a thick grey sweater thrown over either side of his neck.

“You’re back early,” a voice half-whispers, punctuated by the unmistakable sound of the press of lips against skin. The head lifts, Eren’s tips up, and another slow, lingering kiss is shared between him and the person in the doorway. The moment seems too private for Jean to _not_ avert his eyes.

“I’ve got a stowaway,” Eren murmurs against the person’s ear, his voice so much quieter and sweeter than Jean’s heard it in the few hours he’s known this boy. Without looking, he reaches behind his back and nudges Jean with his elbow.

The first glimpse Jean catches of Eren’s supposed _friend_ is a flick of jaw-length black hair, which she pushes out of her face with a quick hand so dark grey eyes flick up and down the length of Jean’s body. Her lips curl into a surprised sort of smile that’s almost too cautious, and she looks at Eren with something Jean can’t quite parse in her eyes before he shakes his head and her smile falls, just a bit.

There’s still a definite curl to her lips when she steps forward with a hand extended in his direction, though. “Nice to meet you,” she greets him. Hesitant as it is, her smile is strikingly beautiful. “I’m Mikasa.”

“Um, Jean,” he answers clumsily, accepting her handshake a little too hard. She doesn’t even flinch. “You’re—”

Eren cuts him off with a warning widening of his eyes. He turns back to Mikasa, unabashedly nosing against her cheek, answer enough. “Where’s—”

“Sleeping still,” Mikasa answers before he can finish the question. “I don’t think he’ll mind if I wake him, though.”

“Nah, let him rest. Poor thing loses enough sleep as it is.”

Mikasa tucks an errant lock of Eren’s hair behind his ear and smooths a hand across his ruffled bangs. “Only if you sleep too, then. There’s no way you’ve gotten in a wink since you left.”

“You’re practically my mother sometimes.”

“Don’t be gross,” Mikasa says with a slight smile, another gentle kiss pressed against Eren’s temple as he pretends to cringe. She turns the same pleasant look on Jean and says, “There’s an extra room in the back. You look like you could use some sleep too.”

With a face like that, and Eren’s urging stare alongside it, Jean can’t find a good reason to say no.

 

* * *

 

Jean doesn’t remember his dream. It’s a pitch black lapse of memory, nothing about it but the warm laughter of a voice he doesn’t know but feels like he should—something he’s grown more accustomed to since Eren showed up at the wall last night.

The room he wakes up in, though, is twice the size of his and Ymir’s bedroom back home, if not just as scarcely furnished. Mikasa had said a quiet apology in passing for the state of the room, that it was nowadays more of a dropping ground for Eren’s odds and ends than anything else, and Jean couldn’t even reply coherently because he was struck dumb by a _bedroom_ bigger than most of his entire _apartment_.

Scattered around the bed in the corner are miscellaneous items of clothing, drawings, and old journals, each one more water damaged than the last. Jean has the strangest urge to pick them up, to learn what this guy is all about, but the same anxious curiosity keeps him rooted to the mattress.

He doesn’t know this boy. He doesn’t know that girl. They’ve never met before. He has no right to poke around in personal items that don’t concern him.

What he _can_ see, can recognize is the unmistakable eerie green gaze of a familiar poster, balled up in a crumpled mess at the foot of the bed. Carefully, Jean reaches out for it, uncurls the crinkled paper ball until its unsettling, open-mouthed glare is trained on his face. Only this poster isn’t quite the same as the countless others he’s seen tacked up on light poles and outside of factory walls—this particular rogue has been marked up with dark marker, thick eyebrows drawn over glowing eyes, under-eye bags sketched roughly, its hair elongated and mussed in hasty pen lines to match the boy’s who’d led him here. Almost illegible writing has covered the deep red font at the bottom, _REPORT ROGUES_ crossed out in favor of a speech bubble proclaiming _FUCK THE MP_ before the writing falls off the page, like the paper was ripped from someone’s hands.

The sketched-in features, the scribbled writing—it all brings back Eren last night, hunched in the shadows and staring at the drawing on the wall like it was a funhouse mirror, distorting his face right before his eyes.

_“I do look pretty dashing on that poster.”_

Jean shakes his head of the strange image that feels almost _real_ , like he’s seen it before: Eren transformed into the beast the sign wants him—people _like_ him—to be. His stomach grumbles finally at the lack of food since Annie’s stolen meal hours ago, and it’s the push he needs to lift himself from the bed and seek out someone who knows where to get decent food for whatever leftover pocket change he hadn’t stuffed into Ymir’s sachet.

His feet hit padded carpet with each careful step forward until he reaches his cane, and he pads the rest of the way out leaning heavier on it than usual. There are muffled voices coming from a cracked door at the end of the hallway, and every step closer to the entryway them closer and closer, until he’s just outside of the door left ajar that conceals them.

“And you’re sure he doesn’t know?” a voice that Jean can’t quite parse asks.

Eren’s unmistakable drawl rasps, “Not from what I can pick up. Didn’t recognize me or nothing.”

“So that means—”

“What we’ve always thought it would be. It’s gonna be _him_.”

A third voice—Mikasa, from the sounds of it—sighs. “I just worry about what his reaction will be.”

“I worry about _both_ of them,” the first voice says. “You remember the last time they…”

The voice trails off. Mikasa picks the conversation back up again, her tone carefully flat. “I remember.”

“Sorry. Of course you do.”

“Hey,” Mikasa murmurs. There’s a quiet shuffling, and then the barely-there sound of a gentle kiss. “Don’t beat yourself up.”

Silence fills Jeans ears, momentarily, and he doesn’t realize he’s stood with his back pressed against the wall until Eren’s yawn breaks the calm and he says, “What time s’it?”

“Nearly ten,” says the unrecognizable voice.

Eren hums. “Should wake him before he gets up and forgets where he is.”

Another shift of motion, and Jean contemplates sprinting back to the bedroom to not look suspicious, but the throbbing in his foot says otherwise. Instead, he nudges the cracked door with his elbow, a sheepish, apologetic expression already on his face.

“Uh. I’m already up. Sorry,” he says without making full eye contact. He can still see the source of the first voice he’d heard, though, a soft exhale of breath coming from a boy around the same age as Eren and Mikasa but much scrawnier than the two of them. The boy pushes a handful of shaggy blonde hair out of his face to uncover the brilliant smile concealed beneath.

“Don’t worry about that,” he says brightly, sitting up straighter on the bed. Jean can’t help but notice both arms holding his slim waist, one from each person flanking his sides. “Good morning! I’m Armin, nice to meet you.”

“Jean,” he answers carefully. “Um, you too.”

“Sorry I was asleep when you came in. Long night,” Armin says, leaning forward and patting the edge of the bed at his, Eren’s, and Mikasa’s feet invitingly. “C’mon, Eren’s filled me in on what’s going on. I won’t bite.”

Eren murmurs, “Mikasa might,” but it falls on deaf ears as Jean edges forward to the sound of Armin’s gentle, insistent prodding.

He moves until his shins barely meet the side of the bed, and he flops down, grateful again to take the weight off of his leg. He places the cane on his lap, not breaking eye contact with its scarred surface until a pale, calloused hand touches the very end of it. He follows the hand up an arm, and finds himself eye-to-eye with Mikasa. He can already feel himself flush under her careful gaze.

“Can I see this?” she asks in measured syllables, obviously trying not to intrude too much, but curious enough to do so anyway.

“Uh, sure,” Jean murmurs in response, and he hands over the splintered wood so she can examine it.

And then she promptly reaches over Armin’s lap to smack Eren in the arm with it.

“You made him _run_ with this?” she snaps at him, her face a perfect mixture of sarcasm and genuine annoyance. Eren yelps as the cane hits bare skin, cackling in its wake as Armin dissolves into giggles between them.

“Asshole!” Eren chuckles. “We had to be careful, okay!”

“He’s injured and walking on a cane that’s a gust of wind away from falling apart! What were you going to do if it broke, carry him?”

Jean tugs the cane back from her hands, for once feeling strangely protective over the piece of wood that he’s been cursing since the day he got it. Burden or not, that old cane’s the only thing keeping him upright half of the time anymore.

“I _could_ carry him, ye of little faith,” Eren says petulantly, pulling Jean’s focus back to the three snuggled up at the head of the bed. Mikasa’s put-upon glare fades into a smile, and the arms they each have around Armin’s back tighten a little more as he curls himself into their bodies.

“Ignore them,” Armin says, smirking to himself as the two at his sides silently squabble through stuck-out tongues and middle fingers over his head. “You must be hungry.”

“Um, yeah,” Jean answers, a little dumbstruck. “I don’t have a lot of money, but if there’s something cheap—”

“Nonsense,” Armin says. “We have a stocked kitchen.”

 

* * *

 

It takes some time to cajole Eren and Mikasa out of their wrestling match once Armin gets out of bed, but they make it to the kitchen, Jean trailing not far behind, staring wide-eyed at the clean house as he follows mutely. Armin and Mikasa give him a brief, passing tour while Eren pouts about losing—after the hallway and entryway is the living room, which connects to both the backyard and the kitchen that they lead him into with promises of pancakes and eggs and a list of food that amounts to more than what he usually eats in an entire day.

Watching the three of them quickly move about the kitchen without so much as a misstep into each other is something to see. Even Annie and Bertholdt and Reiner, who have been best friends as long as Jean can remember, don’t have the kind of rhythm that Eren, Mikasa, and Armin fall easily into. Eren’s fingers tease their way beneath Mikasa’s sweater on his way to fetch bacon from the refrigerator, her lips drop a soft kiss Armin’s shoulder while she cracks eggs into a bowl without looking, and Armin bubbles with laughter when Eren grabs him around the waist and swings him in a circle before he can finish plating the pancakes. There’s love and happiness in their sort-of dance, but also cautiousness, gratefulness—there’s no mistaking the long stares Mikasa and Armin give Eren when his back is to them, or the way Eren’s touch lingers longer and longer each time he catches them.

Jean bites his tongue around the questions swimming in his mind as the food is placed on the table, the three of them digging in while he slowly reaches for a single pancake, one scoop of eggs, the smallest piece of bacon on the plate. There’s fear there that if he opens his mouth to even take a bite, something he’ll regret will come tumbling out: _what’s going to happen to me?_ , or the lingering, _what are you?_

The way their eyes flit over to him between conversations he only half-hears only raises his hackles more. Even Armin’s encouraging smile as he passes a carton of juice Jean’s way sets him on edge—he starts to lose his grip as he pours and ends up with a sticky orange stain on the front of Eren’s borrowed shirt. Mikasa slides her chair over with a stack of napkins in her hand, and he wonders if she can feel the way his heart is pounding anxiously against his ribcage as she tries in vain to dry it up. Eren brings him a new shirt and Jean flinches away from the fist clenching the material, half-expecting it to collide with his jaw.

“It’s okay,” Mikasa offers, stone-faced but gentle as she watches Jean waffle over whether or not to change into the shirt. “Eren was joking when he said I bite.”

“She bites,” Eren adds petulantly. The fingers of one hand are hooked into the sleeve of her sweater even as she finishes patting the stain dry. “She bites _me_.”

He smiles at Jean, so does Armin. Jean returns it, albeit wobbly, and slowly peels his juice-soaked shirt off, avoiding their eyes completely. He doesn’t need to see the way they gawk at his visible ribs, the bruises across his shoulders from god-knows-what, the sallowness of his skin. No one should have to see what a pathetic, stereotypical piece of Outer District garbage he is.

The shirt is bigger than the one Eren leant him last night. On second glance, it’s more like Mikasa’s sweater than Eren’s thin t-shirt, and she gives him a slight thumbs up as he slides back into his chair, red-faced and retreating into the cocoon of fabric.

It smells like her. Something about that feels wrong.

Silence falls over the table after that, and Jean takes to scooting sliced pieces of pancake through the syrup lake in the middle of his plate to keep his idle hands busy, until Mikasa cuts through his train of thought.

“You know you can eat those,” she says.

“I’m not used to shit like this,” Jean admits, popping a small sliver of pancake between his teeth. “Breakfast back home is whatever a couple quarters will buy me at a corner shop.”

“All the more reason to eat up,” Armin supplies, nudging the last pancake on the serving plate in his direction.

Jean takes it without much of a fuss, though he’s slow to make his way through it, his full stomach protesting each bite but his mouth begging for more of the taste he’s never really gotten to experience before now. Idle chatter fills his ears again, but he casts his eyes at the bright, sunlit road outside of the window, the colorful skyline more fantastic than he’d ever dared imagine it to be.

“I can’t believe this place,” he says without thinking, interrupting Eren’s comment about the length of Mikasa’s hair or whatever it was he’d been saying. All three sets of eyes look his way, a different expression set in each pair.

“It’s just,” Jean continues, self-conscious under the scrutiny, “so nice.”

“It’s beautiful,” Mikasa affirms, “but it’s nothing like they want you to believe it is.”

Jean eyes her curiously, working his way through a final piece of bacon.

“You’ve heard about that prophecy?” she only half-asks.

Jean nods, heart thudding as he remembers the history books he’d been poring through just yesterday when Ymir caught him, and Armin picks up where Mikasa left off.

“The ruling family are dead set on no one even theorizing about it. Books have been burnt in public, people suspected of knowing more about it than they should keep mysteriously disappearing only for their remains to be found in Outer District alleyway dumpsters months later. Put the blame on the other side and nothing gets traced back to them.”

“There were books,” Jean murmurs, trying to recall any words from the pungent old tomes he’d been furiously trying to imprint in his mind. He feels Armin’s curious gaze on his unfocused face more than he actually sees it. “In the Outer District. I work in the library, and there’s a whole restricted section just, like, _there_.”

Armin squints. It’s the first time all morning that Jean has seen his expression anything less than sunny, and it sets his stomach on edge. “Unguarded?” he asks hesitantly.

“Literacy rate’s not high on the other side,” Jean clarifies.

Silence falls again, none of them quite sure what to say. Jean keeps his eyes on the window as the sun climbs higher in the sky, warmth radiating into the little house. He expects the other three to continue their conversation as they had before, but they don’t.

With a glance up, Jean realizes they’re all still staring at him. He stammers something unintelligible and tries not to imagine the three of them laughing in his face.

“Is there anything you want to know?” Armin asks. The suspicion’s gone from his face, back to the sunny smile. All curiosity and not a shred of anything that might have been wrong.

There’s a lot Jean wants to know, more than one kid with his shared interest in conspiracy theories could ever answer. He could ask about how they know each other, or how much they can tell him about rogues, about why the districts are set up the way they are. If any of them know of a woman with the last name Kirschstein and a son she’s been missing for nineteen years.

He bites his tongue and asks the most pressing—and least controversial—question on his mind: “I—fuck, there’s no nice way to say ‘why haven’t you called the police on me yet?’ is there?”

“We’re not calling the police,” Mikasa says firmly. She’s not quite glaring at him, but her look is hard and serious. “Never. I can promise you that.”

“I don’t get it then.”

Eren leans back in his seat, precariously tilted on two chair legs and folding his arms behind his head. “Lemme give you a history lesson here, pal,” he says. “We’ve known each other forever—Mikasa and I were buds before we even left our moms’ wombs, Armin bounced along a few months later, and I have literally never known a year in my life that they weren’t in. Shit doesn’t change when you turn ten and the government decides it’s time for you to become a wanted criminal looking at a death sentence.”

There are more questions fighting their way to the edge of Jean’s lips, but the downcast turn of Mikasa and Armin’s eyes, the grit of Eren’s teeth holds them back.

“Empathy,” Eren says finally. “That’s why. I know what it’s like to be unwanted on this side. They know what it’s like to be in constant fear of losing someone. None of us feel all that up to letting the Idiot Police kill a kid that’s done shit wrong.”

“I…” Jean’s eyes stray from Eren’s intense gaze, instead focusing on what juice made it into his half-empty glass, the last dregs of it rippling from the impact of his meager weight leant against the table.

He wants to say something about Eren, about the terrible things he’s been taught about people like him for the last nineteen years—about how he’s sorry, he should have known, he never wanted to believe it anyway.

Eren smiles, though, and kicks Jean’s good ankle under the table. Shoves the last piece of bacon at him. Leans on the back two legs of his chair. Looks nothing like he wants to hash out Jean’s guilt complex.

He says _“Eat”_ at the same time Armin says, “That’s not what you really wanted to ask, was it?”

From the way his breath is knocked from his lungs, you’d have thought Armin had slapped Jean across the back, but it’s not so—Armin is serene as ever, all wide, batting eyes and a little blonde head tipped invitingly forward. He might as well be a monster plastered across a warning poster the way Jean looks at him like he’s impending doom embodied.

“I don’t—” Jean doesn’t speak as much as he wheezes. “I don’t know what to ask.”

“You do,” says Armin knowingly, folding his hands primly beneath his chin.

“Y-you said yourself it could get me killed. Sh-shallow grave in an Outer District dumpster and all that.”

“It won’t,” Armin assures him. “Not here. Doesn’t leave the breakfast table, right Mi—? Mikasa.”

Mikasa’s dark eyes flick up from where they’d been focused on her lap. “Right,” she says without a beat. Jean’s not even entirely sure she knows what she’s agreeing to. She stares right back beneath the table almost instantly.

“Doesn’t leave the breakfast table,” Armin repeats.

“So it’s true,” Jean starts, heart thudding painfully, eyes flitting from side to side like he’s being watched by someone, something. “If they’re killing people who theorize about that prophecy, it has to be true, doesn’t it?”

“That’s the general consensus here,” replies Armin, a pointed look cast at Eren, who’s suddenly intrigued. “It’s too much work for the monarchy to go around killing people theorizing about lies.”

“They’re shitty enough at their job as it is,” Eren says with a nod, gesturing between himself and Jean—the _we should both be dead for being here_ goes unsaid, but it hangs in the air all the same.

Jean hesitates. He’s reminded of the feeling he had with Ymir just hours ago in the library, so many things he could say that he’s afraid to, lest they come tumbling out on top of each other.

And then he’s thinking about Ymir, the closest thing he’s had to a friend. About _“no one gives a shit, so long as we abide by their stupid infiltration laws.”_ About Annie’s insistence on keeping things the way they were, and about _“if you want to leave, then leave, but don’t expect us to reject any impulses to kill you.”_

“It’s why the districts are split up, isn’t it?” comes tumbling out of Jean’s mouth before he has the good sense to shove his own palm over it. He can hear is heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears as Armin’s eyes widen, eyebrows shoot up just a bit across from him. Through his hands, Jean spits out, “To keep them a-apart, the—the _‘two people of the light and of the dark’_ —isn’t it?”

It’s hard to parse the mood that falls over the table—Armin’s expression both darkens and softens, Eren leans forward so his chair is back on all four legs, Mikasa looks back up from her lap and straight at Jean, blinking.

“It’s…” Eren starts, sharp, crooked teeth beginning to gnaw his lower lip. He’s starting to shake—he’s been a rock this whole time, but his fingers are starting to shake, so he balls them into fists and buries them beneath his legs. Mikasa takes notice and leans into him, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear and whispering something so quiet against it that her lips barely move.

“It’s a theory,” he finishes. “It’s a theory.”

The next thing to cross Jean’s mind startles even him—a thought he hasn’t let himself think, something so outlandish, so clichéd, so _selfish_ that—

“I think it’s me.”

He’s never seen someone’s eyes go as wide as Eren’s do in that moment, and he’s never quite heard the noise that comes out of his mouth, something caught between a gasp, a laugh, and a sob. Eren’s hands start to shake again, Jean can tell by the way his back bristles and he shifts them in their place underneath his thighs.

Eren’s mouth opens to speak. Jean’s heart pounds in anticipation.

There’s a knock on the front door.

The spell is broken. Eren’s intense stare drifts elsewhere, looking for escape instead of for answers. When his eyes meet Jean’s again, they’re frantic instead of scared or interested. Jean’s almost sure he’s about to grab him and run for dear life again, and he’s readying himself for impact when a chair scrapes slowly backward across the floor.

“Relax,” Mikasa says, stilling Eren with a hand on his bare arm that drifts up to flick him softly underneath the chin. “You’re safe. Both of you.”

She stands up to answer the door, but not before tossing something from her lap and onto the table: a cell phone. Jean’s gut instinct is to gawk at it, jaw agape and wondrous—they don’t have those in the Outer District, they’re little more than a fantasy—but he remembers the person behind the door and doesn’t have the time to think about it when there’s someone out there who shouldn’t know that he’s _here_.

Mikasa’s voice from the entryway is nothing like the internal voice of dread and fear that rings throughout Jean’s head—almost as if she’s smiling, sunny as Armin had been up until a few minutes ago.

“Took you long enough,” she says to the person in the doorway, and Jean tries to picture the impish look on her face to no avail. He keeps seeing her stoic, calm—he has no idea why.

“You just texted me a couple of minutes ago!” the voice laughs in response,  bright and warm. Almost like the half-remembered laughter from his dark blur of a dream. Too familiar to be unfamiliar.

“I can’t guarantee that there’s anything edible left from breakfast, but come in.”

The front door shuts again, and Jean’s heart is in his throat. Footsteps come closer, closer—the closer they get, the more open he is to booking it again with Eren. When they stop just outside of the kitchen, he can’t bring himself to look up.

“Oh, hi!” says the voice whose owner Jean can’t, _won’t_ bring himself to look, he doesn’t _know_ this person, this person could hurt him, he doesn’t _know_ them.

He doesn’t want to look.

Something drags his gaze up from the table anyway.

 _Stop it_. _You don’t know him. You don’t know him. He’s a stranger._

He’s tall, he’s got black hair, warm brown skin dusted in dark freckles. _Handsome_ , Jean’s mind supplies against his will.

“My name’s Marco,” says the boy at Mikasa’s side with too bright of a girn.

Jean’s breath catches in his throat. He meets the boy’s eyes—wide, dark, over-brewed tea brown. They stare at each other in pointed silence before Jean rips his gaze away once more.

After all, it’s not like he knows him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: what the fuck jean, what the fuck eren, will someone finally answer the thousands of questions everyone has (yes but also no)


	15. just an update

hello! as much as i wish this was a real update, this is just an update on what's up with the fic for the near future

so as of the other day, my hard drive has decided to crash and take what i had of the chapter with it. luckily, we've caught up to what i had prewritten, so this chapter is all that i've lost, but unluckily, this leaves me in limbo as to when i'll be able to get a new one. could be this week, could be after payday in two weeks, could be after that still.

until then, i've got a notebook set aside to work on trying to rewrite what i lost, and limited computer access on another computer if i get it done again. i'm going to _try_ to update while i wait for a new hard drive. no guarantees, but i'll try!

(i'll delete this once i get updating again, but i figured it would be easier to put it directly here rather than clogging up the jeanmarco tag on tumblr)

♡♡♡


End file.
